The comedy drama superhero series The Tick has been cancelled by Amazon six weeks after airing its second season. The series featured the adventures of a nigh-invincible superhero with a blue insect suit that may or may not be his actual skin, a mysterious origin, no memory, and a tendency to talk like a paragon of 1950’s virtue twisted through a penchant for absurdity. He is joined in his mission of battling supervillains of varying levels of competence by an oddball assortment of characters including Arthur, a former accountant with moth supersuit that allows his to fly, Arthur’s paramedic sister Dot who develops powers of precognition, and Overkill, a brutally violent and cybernetically enhanced vigilante who frequently clashes with the Tick over his methods.
An original creation of series showrunner Ben Edlund, the Tick began life in 1986 as the mascot of a newsletter for a Massachusetts comic book store Edlund frequented as a teenager. The character’s popularity led to his expansion, first as a few pages of story within the newsletter, and then as his popularity grew, a series of full-length comics financed by the store, the humor of which was driven by light-hearted parodies of stories, characters and tropes seen in the comics of Marvel and DC. Indeed, although it’s likely a coincidence, many fans have observed the Tick’s similarity in appearance and theme to Blue Beetle.
The news of The Tick’s cancellation was broken on Ben Edlund’s Twitter feed. The creator expressed his love of the show and its cast, and thanked the “LunaTicks” for their continued passion for the show and promised to search for a different streaming service to continue producing it. Replies from hundreds of fans expressed their dismay at they news, with many stating their desire for the show to be picked up elsewhere.
This series isn’t the first adaptation of the comics to have made it to our screens. Most people’s touchstone for the character is a live-action series from 2001 with Patrick Warburton in the eponymous role, which was far more cartoonish than this most recent outing, but still just as much fun. Additionally, an actual cartoon aired for three seasons in the mid-‘90s that retained the source material’s self-aware satire of superhero comics.
Although Amazon doesn’t publically release its viewing figures, the tally is the most likely reason for the cancellation. Like many beloved shows that unexpectedly get axed, The Tick was well regarded amongst those who watched it, but unfortunately the number of people who actually did so wasn’t large enough for Amazon to justify the cost of its continued production. However, the show’s actors are all still under contract and many have expressed their desire for it to be picked up elsewhere. As Edlund stated in his tweet, presumably to be read in the Tick’s voice “Destiny demands that my compatriots and I now seek a new home for this series.” Hopefully, they’ll be successful and The Tick will eventually find its way back to our screens.
Source: Ben Edlund