We watched the pilot of The Tick on Amazon yesterday. Boy, was it dark. Funny, but very dark.
That darkness is there in the original Ben Edlund comics. The very first issue shows the Tick in a straightjacket in a padded room. It is entirely possible the entire comic series is a delusion in his brain. The comic was quickly taken over by the brilliant, skewering superhero parody that perhaps found its fullest expression in the animated series. After all these years, it feels a bit strange to see something that goes back to the source material and focuses on an aspect that was downplayed previously. If they make more, I’ll watch it, because it looks like it’s going to go in interesting new directions.
One of the things that struck me, is that some of the Tick’s lines of dialogue are the exact same lines that Ben Edlund has be repackaging and reselling for nearly 30 years! That’s kind of crazy, and kind of brilliant, if you can pull it off.