Costumed superheroes are everywhere these days, so it figures that Amazon would eventually get a piece of that action too. But Amazon is taking a bit of a different angle, rather than adapt the adventures of established comic book superheroes from Marvel or DC Comics. The Tick allows the opportunity to tell superhero stories while also spoofing the genre.
Amazon released the first trailer for The Tick on Wednesday, featuring Peter Serafinowicz (Guardians of the Galaxy) as the oafish, hulking, blue-suited, antenna-sporting crimefighter who has a rather clear moral sense (“Murder, it’s just not cool!”), but doesn’t really understand how his destructive superheroics affect the lives of normal citizens around him. The Tick may believe he lives in a grandiose comic book world, but it’s not the world most people live in.
The Tick‘s first season will run 12 episodes on Amazon, but will be split into two parts for some reason. The first six-episode chunk will premiere on Aug. 25 (though the pilot has been available to view for nearly a year), with the second part of the season to debut in 2018. Check out the first trailer:
https://youtu.be/GiFF18KblJ0
The Tick was originally a comic book by Ben Edlund, but achieved much greater success as a Saturday morning cartoon for Fox Kids that ran three seasons from 1994 to 1996. The show developed a cult following thanks to its superhero parody and subversive humor that surely appealed more to older viewers. Fox adapted The Tick into a live-action series starring Patrick Warburton that lasted one season.
Edlund has said that the Fox live-action show was closer in spirit to his original comic books, focusing on character rather than action. But this new Amazon version looks like it will feature some big action, or as big as its budget will allow. Perhaps most of those big action set pieces were put into the trailer for maximum sizzle. But it appears that there will be plenty of room for character moments too, such as The Tick interacting with regular people and his banter with sidekick Arthur (Griffin Newman), who becomes something of an unwilling (or unwitting) superhero.
At the very least, many fans will probably be happy that Serafinowicz is wearing a mask over his face. He might not be as physically imposing or square-jawed oafish as the comic book and animated versions (or Warburton’s version), but based on the trailer, he gets the character right. He’s a giant, generally clueless dork (like a dumb version of Adam West’s Batman) who relishes a fight with bad guys. The writing certainly seems to help with that. Will he eventually adopt his famous battle cry, “Spoon“?
The Tick makes its debut on Amazon Prime Aug. 25.
