The Tick creator Ben Edlund

Bullseye with Jesse Thorn

NPR

Society & Culture

4.7 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 17 May 2019

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Tick is one of the strangest, most compelling superheroes ever. Creator Ben Edlund has lived with the character for over 30 years now. The Tick has been a comic book series, an animated TV show, a video game, and a live action TV show. Now, The Tick is back with another live-action TV show on Amazon. The Tick is kind of this giant man in a blue suit with antennas on his head. He's got all the classic trappings of a superhero: strength, speed, invincibility. But he's also kind of a dope. Edlund joins us to discuss how his relationship with the character has changed over three decades. Plus, why he feels the latest revival nails the strange, odd tone in ways the other projects haven't. Writing compelling and grounded superhero stories is hard to pull off in a post-Dark Knight world ... if you haven't met The Tick by now you're in for a treat!

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR.
0:12.7	I'm Jesse Thorn. It's Bullseye.
0:22.3	The tick if you don't already know is a superhero who was created by Ben Adlin, who's
0:26.6	my guest.
0:28.6	The tick started out as a comic book, then it became an animated TV show, then a video
0:34.1	game, then a live-action TV show, and now maybe 10 or 15 years since the last version
0:41.4	another live-action TV show now on Amazon.
0:46.3	The tick is, well, he is a tick superhero, a giant man in a blue suit with antennas on
0:55.6	his head. He has strength and speed and invincibility, but he is a genuine dope. He doesn't always
1:04.6	know where he came from. He isn't particularly concerned with the things that human people
1:10.8	have to deal with, like money and jobs, or basically anything besides justice and destiny.
1:17.9	Those are the two things he's interested in. In this newest show, he's played by the
1:23.1	great Peter Sarah Finnewitz. So anyway, the tick. He finds a sidekick, a little dorky accountant
1:30.6	named Arthur. Arthur basically worries about all the normal human things on the tick's
1:37.8	behalf, and also the other thing he does is fly in a moth suit. He has a moth suit.
1:46.6	It's a superhero show that is both absolutely preposterous and oddly grounded. The villains
1:52.6	are bizarre and goofy. There's a guy with a chair for a head. There is a lobster and a giant
2:00.0	trench coat, but there are also people who act like real people. And actions in this world
2:06.9	have consequences, and even superheroes aren't immune to government oversight. Take this
2:13.6	clip from the show's new second season. Aegis is the secret government-funded organization
2:21.0	that is basically an official superhero registry. Half registry, half clubhouse. And the
2:30.3	government wants the tick and Arthur to sign up. And in this scene, the two of them have
	...

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