Reflections on The Tick vs. Season One

I rarely read comic books, but I loved Ben Edlund's The Tick. When FOX began airing an animated version of the comic book, I was anxious to see how it would translate to the television screen. The first season debuted when I was in high school, and my initial reaction was that it was just okay. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't anything that great, either. To be fair, they were trying to create a G-rated cartoon out of a PG-13 comic, so a lot of the humor would have to be tweaked.

After revisiting these episodes years later (sans "The Tick vs. The Mole Men"), I must say my attitude has changed somewhat. I can now look at the series as an entity in and of itself and not compare it to the print version from which it spawned, and for a kid's cartoon, it's pretty damn clever. Many of the story lines, characters and dialogue are lifted directly from the comic books, with some minor changes (in the episode "The Tick vs. Chairface Chippendale" the antagonist has a pit filled with crocodiles, in the comic version the pit also contains man-eating cows). The Tick also serves as a kind of spiritual precursor to Venture Bros. in the way good and evil is treated like a business enterprise and everyone fights for their share of the limelight. This is not entirely a coincidence, since both Edlund and Venture Bros. creator Jackson Publick have worked together on both shows.

I'm sure fans who haven't already snatched up this DVD will soon, but don't expect a lot of extras. In fact, there are no extras at all: no audio commentaries, no deleted scenes, no anything. That's slightly disappointing, but for a cult show like this one, folks should be happy to have this (almost complete) set to add to their collection.