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Tuesday, June 21, 2005
In search of The Tick
This post owes a debt to one Mr. Bacardi, who has alerted me that the animated version of The Tick has returned to television by way of Toon Disney. My DVR is currently catching all the showings for me, much to my satisfaction. This was a cartoon that came by right when I was starting my comic book reading days. I was a pretty avid fan of Fox Kids' programming but, with the exception of Batman: The Animated Series, this show was by far my favorite. Watching it I can see why. This cartoon reminds me of what I look for in so many comics, especially superhero comic books. But first, let us go back farther than the weekend mornings of 1994.
I already had formed some discrimination when it came to comedy, even in my childhood days. My Glasgow-raised father turned my brother and me onto the BBC comedy radio series he himself grew up with. I liked them all but my favorite was The Goon Show, masterminded by Spike Milligan and featuring the talent of Peter Sellers. Without that show we wouldn’t have Monty Python or Mr. Show. John Lennon was such a fan that he chose George Martin to produce The Beatles’ records because he produced the show (Hard Days Night director Richard Lester also has his own Goon connection). The show astounded me because it was committed to silliness but silliness as a way to tell a story. This wasn’t sketch comedy, every episode was telling something that worked in the motif of the adventure stories other radio shows would have but they would just become more and more absurd as the plot thickens. I still laugh whenever think of “here, have a gorilla.” The idea that absurdity wouldn’t be a distraction from storytelling but be the main element of it had a profound effect on me when I was just starting to develop my taste in pop culture. (For those who want to listen to The Goon Show BBC 7 reruns shows on Monday nights)
Later on I would be old enough to stay up until 9:00, if you can believe such a thing. Nickelodeon stopped programming at 7:59 and Nick at Nite would come on with television of yesteryear. It was the revival of Get Smart that would hit me much like Milligan’s creation did. Mel Brooks and Buck Henry made themselves a show that was also quite silly and used that as a narrative device (the narrative device as it were) but here, my little brain was stunned, it was in a visual medium! You can get a lot sillier now when you can use moving pictures, as anyone who has seen a secret agent talk into a shoe can tell you.
And then came The Tick, created by one Ben Edlund. If aural entertainment gave you a step on the rung of the silly ladder and live action let you climb a little higher then animation was reaching the very top and ringing that avant-garde victory bell. I can’t think of one scene out of the entire series that betrayed the off-beat environment of Tick’s The City. Superheroes, powerful authority figures in other stories, were what made everybody else’s lives absurd because of their total lack of connection to reality. I don’t think Arthur or The Tick, or most superheroes on the show for that matter, ever appeared outside of their costumes. In fact, we see in the first episode that Arthur gets fired from his accounting job because he won’t show up to work without wearing his “rabbit suit.” The Tick and Arthur aren’t going crazy; “they’re going sane in a crazy world” as our big blue friends puts it. This wasn’t strength and flight as power fantasy, this was the superhero, every damn one of them, as a person who carves out their individuality in the face of a bland world (I like how many people on the show are drawn with squinted, almost closed eyes).
 Read a book, people!
I think it was that apperception for “the absurd narrative” that gave me my love of comics. I find the superhero comics I like are the ones where one strange thing, often not seen as strange in a world where everyone loves a Kryptonian man, happens after another. I love the ‘60s superhero books edited by Mort Weisenger, Julie Schwartz and Stan Lee where the bright and colorful worlds of superheroes are presented with bombast and confidence about their “paper universe” as Grant Morrison would tell us. I suppose I still love the superhero comics the most that have some sense of humor to them (either intentional or not, and when it comes to comics it’s sometimes hard to tell the difference) and love exploring the things you can get away with by being of a superhero’s world instead of bringing in some real world angst into the proceedings. This appreciation bleeds out of superheroes and brings me to love the works of Gilbert Hernandez, Jim Woodring, Roger Langridge and the older Dan Clowes work like Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron. It’s not the only stimulation I go to comics for but it’s a pretty big catalyst for a lot of what I read.
Enough analysis though, let’s talk about the wonderful humor of The Tick! People, you have no idea how joyful it was for me to hear the Dr. Strangelove character scream out “Liar! Liar! PANTS ON FIRE!!” in the episode “The Tick vs. Dinosaur Neil.” It was just as good as I remember it. Those supervillains took what Dick Tracy and Batman started and just went crazy with it. Most of them were men dressed in three piece suits, just with freakish looking heads (the ultimate being Headless Henderson). The look of some weird globe popping out over a demurely dressed torso still looks cool, as Cillain Murphy’s Scarecrow from Batman Begins shows us. Then there’s The Terror’s rivalry against Theodore Roosevelt, Thrakazog and his roommate, the Man-Eating Cow and so much more.
Townsend Coleman’s voice for The Tick leads to one great vein of comedy, the heroes many confidently declared slogans. This IMDB page has a pretty good list of a lot of them, my favorite being “Sanity, you're a madman.” The Tick is one big ball of ridiculousness but he does seem genuinely interested in helping the people of the city of The City. He cares for others around him, certainly his pal Arthur, just in his own weird way.
We may never see a DVD release of the animated Tick (the live action show is out. I saw one episode and liked it but it didn’t match the manic cartoon show) but at least we have these reruns. As for current shows, I think a lot of the Adult Swim cartoons, specifically the reruns of Futurama and The Venture Brothers (one episode written by Edlund), do the trick for me. When it comes to comics there isn’t a lot for me in this cool and scary world of modern superheroes but I find Plastic Man hits the right notes sometimes and Super F*ckers just might be the best superhero comic out there right now. Hey, there’s plenty of both DC and Marvel’s back catalog we can mine for our snazzy superhero thrills.
Permanent Link: 12:58 PM |
1 comments
Comments:
You may already know about this, but in case you didn't Season One of the animated series is available on DVD.
# posted by TJG : 9:55 AM
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