by Michelle Klein-Häss
Well, it's final now. The Tick will not be renewed for next season. It joins a slew of other canceled SatAM shows, including every show on CBS, and fan favorites like Freakazoid and The X-Men. In the last Confessions column, I spoke at length about the "cartoon meltdown" that went on in the latter half of 1996. In this period, to be brief, TV animation took a series of hits that will take years to recover from.
But there was a large and important difference with The Tick. The difference was that the show's creator, Ben Edlund, owned his characters and had a strong say about the direction of the show. And ultimately this was why the show's strong moments were so abundant.
The roots of the show's humor came straight from Ben Edlund and his original comic books, and the best episodes were ones that flowed straight from Edlund's pen. Edlund has an intelligent sense of humor that perhaps was lost on the children in his audience, but children were not the only audience the show had. Gradually word of mouth and parents overhearing the wonderful dialogue brought adults to sit down next to their children and enjoy the show as well. This was the same pattern that made Ren & Stimpy the biggest hit cable had seen, and which has made the classic Warner Bros. cartoon shorts such an enduring part of popular culture to this day.
But dialogue wasn't the only aspect of The Tick that was strong...the visuals were great too. Wonderful character design and great action which made you forget the typical "superhero cartoon" style of animation. Between the visuals and the dialogue, the creative team behind The Tick created some memorable characters which didn't even appear in the comic book. American Maid and Sewer Urchin were but two of these new characters, and both had vitality and power to match the ones that made the transition from comic book page to animated cartoon.
Pulliing the elements all together was a very logically worked-out "universe" for the superheroes and supervillains to adventure in. Its consistency provided even more fodder for jokes...when Chairface Chippendale carved a C, an H and part of an A into the moon, the moon stayed that way thereafter. After Omnipitus takes a bite out of the Moon, the bite stayed there. Supervillains would return, some as the focus of yet another plot, some in hilarious cameos. And gradually you would learn more about the characters...the origin of Arthur's moth flying suit, the incredible sewer palace of the Sewer Urchin,
The show continues to have a successful run on Comedy Central, although I doubt that the cable channel has the resources to take over production. And in only three seasons, they are far from the "magic number" of 64 episodes required for success in syndication. So it is likely that after Comedy Central stops showing The Tick it will be a long time before we see it again. So tape the show if you can, and see it while it's still available. With the currently adverse conditions for TV animation in America, it is likely nothing of The Tick's like will be seen for a long time.
Update!
On Saturday, March 29th, Ben Edlund and Tick writer Christopher McCulloch met with the public and the press at the World Animation Celebration in Pasadena, CA. Your faithful reporter asked the first question: what is really going on with The Tick? The answer confirmed rumors that had been flying all around the festival -- even though the show had not been renewed in the Fox Kids Network lineup, it was far from a dead issue. An animated Tick movie is in pre-production, and the show might return to Fox, this time on prime time. Discussion is underway for the first of what might be several prime time first-run Tick specials on Fox's prime time schedule, and plans are in the works to show some of the previously produced episodes in prime time as a trial balloon. Edlund's big, blue friend apparently is indeed Nigh Invulnerable.
If you have a rebuttal to this editorial, send it to mhass703@2cowherd.net. We'll be happy to post it here.
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