Brendan Hines has held a number of TV roles over the course of his career, but has been most known for his role as Eli Roker in Lie to Me. He is very familiar within the sci-fi genre, having portrayed Andy Goode in Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles. He will now be playing the role of Superian in Amazon’s The Tick.

Screen Rant got a chance to talk with Hines at San Diego Comic Con 2017, where we discussed what drew him to the role of Superioa, how much fun it was to play Superian, and how does The Tick stay grounded even though it is a satire of the superhero genre.

Talk to me about Superian. What drew you into the role and how much fun is it to play?

Brendan Hines: It’s a ton of fun to play. The comedy drew me to the role. The fact that you are approaching a superhero story and you are approaching it from going around the back and approaching it from a reverential place but from a humorous place and from a very self aware place. And that to me is great because the tone of the cartoon is one of the things that whittled down and defined my sense of humor as a kid.

You’re a 90s kid too. I know!

Brendan Hines: Yeah. I was born in ‘76. Mystery Science Theater 3000, The Tick, Red Dwarf, I was talking about it yesterday with somebody too. Those are the kinds of things that really shape my sense of humor. It’s the self awareness. I love sci-fi, but I love it when people can find new ways in. And I think that any show that doesn’t have a sense of humor about itself is going to cut off a lot of narrative avenues, so it’s nice to be on a show that’s open to anything and we are kind of open to anything.

I think right now with the big superhero climate being the way that it is, I think that having a superhero satire in this era is brilliant. So how does it stay grounded though from other iterations of The Tick that have come before it?

Brendan Hines: Yeah. That’s a good question. There are so many people on the show who aren’t superheroes or are resisting the call of heroic acts that that is incredible grounding for us, I think for the audience, because that’s probably the experience that they would have if somebody knocks on their door one day and shows up and says, “Let’s go jump off that building.” Most of us would probably say, “No, thank you. I’m reading e-mail.” But all of those people are sort of the core of the show. Superian, my character, this enormously famous superhero that has been around for 100 years and comes from another planet, he is not the entry point for the audience. The entry point for the audience is Arthur and Dot and Kahlil, who plays the guy who works at the convenience store, and even Ms. Lint, the villain. She is incredibly human and humanized by the show. That to me is all very grounding.

MORE: Arthur & Dot's Relationship In The Tick Explained

The Tick premieres on Amazon August 25, 2017.