It’s Pilot Season over on Amazon again, and one of the three new candidates is a reboot of The Tick, Ben Edlund’s really remarkable superhero comedy/parody that was a cult favorite in Fox about a thousand years ago, after a healthy cult-run as a comic (also by Ben Edlund). You can check it out here.
It’s not what we expected.
Yes, it’s written by the Tick creator Ben Edlund, and even the original TV Tick, Patrick Warburton, is around as a producer. But it’s so … normal, in a way. Kind of dark and gritty. It actually has a plot, and it — it makes SENSE. It was actually more about Arthur and his origin, and about the superheroic world of the Tick than it was about the big blue idiot himself. And the Tick was (almost) as bizarre as you’d expect. But … in a sense, the explained *too much.* It wasn’t just blessedly goofy, the CIty was way to much like, you know, a CITY, and … and the Tick didn’t say SPOOOOON! even ONCE.
The costumes are … acceptable. Kind of the New 52 version of what could have worked. The new Tick suit isn’t nearly as BLUE! as Warburton’s was. Arthur isn’t nearly old enough or dumpy enough. And we even know what anti-psychotics he’s on, and how brave and beautiful his sister is (“Somebody new is bleeding.”) by the end of the pilot. It’s all just so real. Just like it never was.
We really WANT to like this new Tick. We’ve missed it; the first show never got a fair chance to become a Simpson-like legend unto itself. But this version, even from Edlund himself, makes one more wistful than gleeful.
We’ll see.
