You Face, The Tick!
The Tick is Mighty! Nuff, Said.
SPPOOOONNNN!!!!
Character Biography[]
The Tick seems to have no memory of his life before being The Tick, and indeed not much memory of anything; more than likely due to frequent head injuries. In the live-action series, Batmanuel suggests that The Tick may be from space. In the original comic series, The Tick is apparently legally insane, having escaped from a mental institution located not too far from The City.In the animated series he has passed his official superhero initiation test before moving into the city. In the live-action series, however, he was tricked into moving to (and protecting) The City after irritating the employees of a remote bus station he had sworn to protect.
A square-jawed, muscular, bright blue-costumed figure with antennae sticking up from his head, The Tick is a surreal parody of superheroes, in the vein of Dave Sim's character, The Cockroach. He is well-intentioned, friendly, good-natured, high-spirited, frequently obtuse, and prone to quipping odd, dim remarks and "inspirational" speeches filled with bizarre metaphors. The Tick is known for his nonsensical battle cry, "Spoooooon!", which he decided upon one day while eating breakfast (specifically, the cereal Drama Flakes). In an interview, actor Patrick Warburton described his perception of The Tick character, as Warburton played him: "His past is a mystery. So everything that he looks at or perceives can be brand new, and he can get really, really excited and intrigued by something that’s just a commonality for everybody else, that’s humorous. He’s like a child; everything’s new. So you just bring that attitude to him, a childlike attitude of discovering things."
Originally, The Tick's costume was meant to be brown in color, but it was decided that blue looked better in print. In The Tick vs. The Tick, wherein The Tick is confronted by Barry, an unstable pseudo-hero who also calls himself "The Tick," Barry wears a brown costume similar to The Tick's. The Tick is named after an arachnid, much like Spider-Man. The logo of the series also resembles that of the 1994 Spider-Man series. According to the live-action series, The Tick is 6 feet 6 inches tall, weighs 230 pounds (6 inches and 170 pounds less than his dimensions in the comic), and has blue hair and eyes.
In the comic series, The Tick gets a job at the Weekly World Planet newspaper. He works in the same office as Clark Oppenheimer, who is also a superhero called the Caped Wonder. Oppenheimer has all the typical Superman powers, including X-ray vision ("see-through vision"), super strength, invulnerability, flight, heat-vision ("very hot vision"), and super hearing. Consequently, he looks down on The Tick as a lower form of superhero with limited powers.
Like many superheroes, The Tick has a sidekick, a rather plump former accountant named Arthur. Arthur wears a white moth suit that allows him to fly; although he is often mistaken for a bunny due to the long ear-like antennae of his costume and the fact that his wings are often folded up. The Tick is impulsive, and Arthur serves as a sort of conscience; he also figures out the schemes of villains and formulates plans to stop them. Arthur's "battle cry" (such as it is) is "Not in the face! Not in the face!"
In all of his incarnations, The Tick is surrounded by a cast of equally absurd heroes and villains, many of them parodies of popular comic book characters and character types. Few of the "superheroes" in the Tick mythos have powers that would measure up to those of DC Comics or Marvel Comics characters, but their foes are often equally silly and/or weak. The Tick lives in a city simply called "The City." In the animated series, The Tick was assigned to The City after his "Cabinet of Terror" (described by The Tick as the "deadliest engine of destruction 1974 had to offer") exploded, leaving him unharmed, during his city assignment selection trials at the National Super Institute Convention in Reno, Nevada. According to the series' companion book, The Tick: Mighty Blue Justice!, at least one of the judges was amazed by this (perhaps by The Tick's survival), awarding The Tick a score of 10 out of 10.
In Other Media[]
In the Animated Series, The Tick, he was voiced by Townsend Coleman, and in the Live-Action TV series, he was played by actor Patrick Warburton. Both Actors recived Praise by Critics and Fans Alike. John DiMaggio is Being Considered as the Next Voice of The Tick.