![\"tick1\"](\"https:\/\/maggipicayune.net\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/09\/tick1.jpg\" "\\"tick1\\"")
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Before\u00a0The Venture Brothers<\/em> and\u00a0Freakazoid<\/em>, there was\u00a0The Tick<\/em>. Based upon the comic books of Ben Edlund, the Tick is an invulnerable being with superhuman strength and no clue. Thankfully his invulnerability keeps him from being killed by his foolish actions because he\u2019s a living cartoon trapped in a \u201crealistic\u201d world that has fringes of craziness.<\/p>\n It was really odd for Fox to show a cartoon of this sort when children usually watched. Most of the show\u2019s jokes were about superhero names: the cowarldy knock-off of Batman called Die Fledermaus, the obscure joke about a plant villain named El Seed or the play-on-words with heroine American Maid.\u00a0The Tick<\/em> was more appealing to fanboys than children. On the other hand, it aired when Fox still took chances on its programming to get out from under the moniker of being \u201cthe fourth network.\u201d After three seasons, it was suddenly cancelled. My friend Jos\u00e9 was (and still is) working at a Fox affiliate at the time. He told me there was a fourth season planned but then the network announced its cancellation. I don\u2019t recall any explanation. Years later,\u00a0The Tick<\/em> reappeared on Comedy Central briefly and I stumbled upon it on Toon Disney. Now the first season has appeared on DVD.<\/p>\n As a DVD, this two-disc set is rather weak. After wading through all the Disney plugs before the main menu, there really aren\u2019t any additional features to compel anyone to buy it. No sketches, no animatics, no deleted scenes, so on. Not even the super-easy and cheap-to-do audio commentaries. To add insult to injury, the 11th episode is missing due to \u201ccreative differences,\u201d whatever that means. If it weren\u2019t for my aversion of most things associated with Disney and its air time competing with Adult Swim, I could\u2019ve saved the money on this and just recorded it on my DVR from Toon Disney. The ending credits are frustrating too; all the actors for the season are listed at once even though Roddy McDowell was only in one episode as the Breadmaster. Other than easily recognizable voices from Rob Paulsen, Tony Jay, Mickey Dolenz, Jim Cummings and Roddy McDowell, it would still be nice to see who was the voice of which character?<\/p>\n As a cartoon, I had forgotten how poor the animation was for a hand-drawn show but the jokes, dialog, plots, voice acting and other elements are what attracted me to it. This is the same strategy used by Adult Swim\u2019s more original programming too. Which now dove tails into\u00a0The Tick<\/em>\u2019s relevance to Adult Swim and\u00a0The Venture Brothers<\/em>. Chris McCullough wrote three episodes of\u00a0The Tick<\/em> cartoon and one of the short-lived, terrible live-action version starring Patrick Warburton. Then he went on to create and develop\u00a0The Venture Brothers<\/em> with Doc Hammer. His involvement with both versions of\u00a0The Tick<\/em> probably explains why Ben Edlund has written several episodes and why Patrick Warburton provides the voice of Brock Samson. More importantly, I think McCullough\u2019s cartoon displays its lineage of humor from\u00a0The Tick<\/em> through the Phantom Limb or White Noise (there\u2019s that play on words again) and parodies of well-known superheroes (everyone loves Stephen Colbert\u2019s version of Professor Impossible, the cold, self-absorbed version of Mr. Fantastic). I only hope a better job is done on the season two set.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Before\u00a0The Venture Brothers and\u00a0Freakazoid, there was\u00a0The Tick. Based upon the comic books of Ben Edlund, the Tick is an invulnerable being with superhuman strength and no clue. Thankfully his invulnerability keeps him from being killed by his foolish actions because … Continue reading