In 1986, a cartoonist named Ben Edlund created a superhero in blue tights known as The Tick, who was supposed to be a newsletter mascot for the New England Comics china of Boston area comic stores. Eventually, The Tick got his own comic, which ended up being a satire of the gritty superhero comics of the eighties like Daredevil and Batman. The Tick had his own animated series back in 1994 for kids, then a failed live-action pilot in 2001 for kids and adults, and now another attempt will be made for a live-action series on Amazon. This is what is known about Amazon's new attempt at The Tick with its Release Date and Cast.
CNET reports that Amazon revealed the how The Tick fans are only guaranteed one episode. Amazon Prime members are asked to stream and review the pilots. I'm not certain why there was more than one pilot, but that's what the source says. The plan is that Amazon prime will take the feedback and then decide if they want to order an entire season of new shows.
This time, The Tick will be played by Peter Serafinowicz, who voices Darth Maul from Star Wars, and played in Guardians of the Galaxy as well. As far as the rest of the cast, Griffin Newman, formerly of HBO's Vinyl, will be playing Arthur Everset, the wannabe superhero sidekick of The Tick. The imdb page shows that Jackie Earle Haley will be playing the role of The Terror. Haley is no stranger to playing iconic comic book characters, as he portrayed Rorschach in Watchmen.
On the original The Tick animated series, he was voiced by Townsend Coleman, who really made this character very dramatic in his war on crime, constantly narrating as he fought. The first live-action series had The Tick voiced by Patrick Warburton, who gave his usual take on the character, but this actor (who has a long resume of voice acting for animation) plays every role pretty much the same. The first live action attempt only lasted nine episodes, and I'm surprised that another effort has been made after what many consider to be a very unfunny attempt at adapting its comic book source material.
One of the issues with any superhero show is it requires a big budget, and back when the 2001 show was attempted, it looked very low budget. Of course, this was back in the age of films like Mystery Men, Steel, The Phantom, and the Joel Schumacher Batman films, where comic book characters were not taken very seriously on film, so The Tick attempted to come off as a low-budget situation comedy. Hopefully, production values have increased.
Amazon revealed that the pilot episode of the new The Tick show will appear on August 19. I would imagine if the pilot works, there will be a whole season ordered of this show.
