The Tick: A Brief History

Amazon's The Tick television series (or web series, if you wish), is just the latest in the character's long and strange history. Here I've taken the liberty of putting the history of The Tick in a nutshell. This is the essential super-tiny super-quick history of The Tick – everything you need to know before you dive in on the newest "The Tick" show.

Much like most superheroes, The Tick began life as a mascot for the Norwood, Massachusetts comic book store New England Comics. Cartoonist Ben Edlund was 18 years old at the time, creating The Tick in the year 1986. A three-page story in the New England Comics Newsletter #14–15 (July/August – September/October 1986) revealed The Tick's first origin story. In that story, The Tick escaped from a mental institution.

The scans of the first adventure of The Tick above come from a ToughPigs reader and user by the name of Jamilla!

The Tick continued his adventures as an independent comic book series in 1988, and was given his trusty sidekick Arthur in The Tick #4 – which was published in April of 1989. Every iteration of The Tick from there on forward with Arthur in tow.

In the year 1994, Edlund worked with the Fox network to create a The Tick Saturday morning cartoon series. This series ran for three seasons and had a single book tie-in called The Tick: Mighty Blue Justice! This was a farcical biography of The Tick that related directly to the cartoon series. This cartoon series was wrote and co-produced by Edlund.

A The Tick video game was made in 1994 for both Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo. The Tick action figures also appeared for the most hardcore of fans – and some cereal tie-ins, too! You could get a The Tick slammer for Pogs!

The year 2001 saw another Fox-released TV show, this time produced by Columbia-TriStar Television. This show lasted a devastating 9 episode run – plus a few more episodes in the show's eventual DVD release in the year 2003. This first live action The Tick show was written and executive produced by Edlund.

To be entirely fair, the pilot for Amazon's version of The Tick first premiered in August of 2016. The pilot was chosen from a set of potential shows for Amazon Video, and has since begun release in August of 2017. This television show has 6 episodes, all released in August of 2017.

Ben Edlund wrote the first and second episode and is tentatively in the mix as writer for the entirety of the second season. Edlund is also on as executive producer of the show. This show's production companies were Amazon Studios and Sony Pictures Television.

In the year 2018, The Tick will have 6 more episodes, also all premiering on Amazon Video. This show is a reboot of the series – as each iteration of The Tick has been thus far. No perfect continuity is necessary between series since the grand design of The Tick is a non sequitur. The Tick is a parody of all other superheroes. The Tick can be found on Amazon right now.

You don't need to know anything to watch The Tick's latest television show, really. The history of The Tick dictates that no one The Tick should have a massive impact on the other. Much like the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, each iteration of the story is almost entirely unaffected by the other. Just sit back and enjoy the madness!