Amazon is getting a tick-sized bite of justice. Ahead of this year’s New York Comic-Con, the streaming service announced Tuesday that it has ordered a full season of The Tick, the dramatic reboot of the cult-classic comedy starring Peter Serafinowicz as the Tick.
Along with Amazon’s other pilots I Love Dick and Jean-Claude Van Johnson, The Tick will premiere in 2017 on Amazon’s streaming service, Amazon Prime Video.
Based on Ben Edlund’s parody comic book The Tick, which became a cartoon and a live-action series in 2001, the Amazon series is about an average accountant named Arthur (Griffin Newman) who learns his city is owned by the world’s most notorious supervillain. The Tick (Serafinowicz) comes to his rescue, forging a new superhero duo to fight crime.
Unlike previous versions of The Tick, which were strictly comedies, Amazon’s reboot was far more dramatic but still outrageously funny. Directed by Wally Pfister — who won a Best Cinematography Oscar for Inception and also directed the original live-action The Tick with Patrick Warburton in the starring role — the reboot expertly balanced comedy, drama, and mystery in a breezy half-hour pilot.
Just from the pilot alone, a few theories began to hit the internet. Mainly, there’s speculation that the Tick is a figment of Arthur’s imagination, a la Fight Club or Mr. Robot. Developing an actual “tick” when he met the evil Terror (Jackie Earle Haley) as a child, it’s possible the Tick might be an alternate personality of Arthur instead of some other guy in a big blue bug costume.
It would be fascinating to see the reboot actually pursue this plot twist instead of being a more straightforward and faithful adaptation of the classic story people are already familiar with. But if it was, that’s fine too, because all The Tick needs to have is a big guy punching things while making us laugh. Anything more is gravy.
