The Tick has long been the funniest take on superheroes to appear on TV. Sure Freakaziod and others are great fun, but the Tick outshines them all. What makes him so great? He embodies everything that makes comic books cheesy while still being iconic. I mean can't you see Superman standing in front of a bunch of villains giving some monologue about not being evil? Oh, wait, I've got a better one! The little text box that describes the silent nobility of the hero as the frames pan up to reveal Superman standing on a roof's edge looking out over his city. Now envision Superman reciting that narrative bit to himself like a kid playing with a toy. He jumps into a firefight and declares, "Villains, I say to you now, knock off all that evil!" OK, yeah, right, like they're going to listen. But he had to say it.

 

You see, Tick is incredibly strong and pretty much invulnerable, but he has an over-the-top child-like trust in the innate goodness of the world and doesn't have the intelligence level to realize others don't see good and evil in the terms that he does. As dumb as he might be, when it comes to matters of heart and morality he's far ahead of those around him. He is the epitome of the muscle-bound do-gooder harbinger of justice.

 

His sidekick Arthur is an accountant with wings. That's it. He's intelligent, but not super-humanly so. He's not very strong, not very sure of himself; he's just a guy in moth suit. But he's the perfect compliment to the Tick. He keeps the big guy in check... more or less. He provides the brains of the duo but usually finds himself backseat to the Tick.

 

Die Fledermaus is a Batman parody who is in the hero business for the fringe benefits rather than heroism. American Maid, something of a Wonder Woman meets Captain America, is the highly-trained hero of the group. She will get the job done at all costs, her do-gooding second only to that of the Tick.

 

Lots of great comical heroes and villains abound. The Human Bullet shoots himself at stuff. That's about it. The Caped Chameleon can't do plaid. Bi-Polar Bear and Captain Lemming, I don't really know what they do, but they make for some side-splitting jokes.

 

The villains include Chairface Chippendale, a powerful man with a chair for a head who buys whatever entertainment he desires - usually illegal, Charles who's a kid with a huge brain in a glass dome, and, your pal and mine, El Seed the giant flower who wants to get rid of the animal kingdom so his brethren can prosper. Or how about the Evil Midnight Bomber What Bombs At Midnight. “An object at rest cannot be stopped! BOOM, BABY, BOOM!!”

 

The comedy is non-stop sometimes coming in the form of crazy ideas like a botanical villain, sometimes from super-hero parodies like Big Shot, who has trouble finding places to change his clothes - a troubled parody of Punisher, and good ol' over-the-top bravado like the Tick yelling, "Villains, I say to you now, knock off all that evil!" I just can't get enough of that.

 

The show is essentially a kids' show and tends to stay pretty simplistic, but it's great fun for any adult comic book geek with a sense of humor. If you're one of these types that treats Spider-Man like it's more important than life itself then you might not be smart enough to understand the humor in this series. No offense, I just call them like I see them. You have to be able to laugh at yourself to enjoy this. Don't take that to mean that you aren't intelligent if you don't like The Tick. It is pretty silly a lot of times, and you might not like such a high dose of goofy with your serving of satire and parody. You have to have some big kid in you to really enjoy the show.