By Angie Han/March 29, 2016 12:00 pm EST
However, there will be some differences between the last The Tick live-action series and the new one. For starters, the concept has been tweaked a bit. While the 2001 show followed the Tick, his trusty sidekick Arthur, and their superhero pals Captain Liberty and Batmanuel, the upcoming series will follow the Tick, Arthur, and Arthur’s caring sister Dot (Valorie Curry). And then there’s the tone of the show, which Edlund said will differ slightly:
It feels like on one hand you can say the superhero landscape is crowded but I think over the last two decades of it there’s nothing else like The Tick. I feel like it has found this unique place where it’s long existed as a satire and I thought that we had the possibility here to do something really different — something that’s filled with satire but also true to action-comedies and superhero comedies.
It’s probably not surprising that Edlund wants to take The Tick in a “darker and more grounded” direction. “Darker and more grounded” is just where superheroes live now, and even the more light-hearted shows and movies tend to take the concept of superhero-ing pretty seriously. But it sounds like The Tick will retain its sense of humor, and thank goodness for that. Lord knows we could use a sharp and silly satire to skewer some of the ponderous superhero sagas we have unfolding onscreen right now.
We’ve got this show about superheroes [where] we get to have fun with the idea of superheroes by starting with kind of a comedic parody of [an] event-oriented-like universe. It will be darker and more grounded. And it’s going to have a real story, a real hero’s myth. We’re the ones that get to have fun with it and that’s kind of the situation where right now that’s an open field in this area of entertainment.
I think we are shooting for kind of a really interesting goal, which is the sort of superhero comedy that you keep wanting to come back to. So we are going to try and land an amazing airplane here. But I think so far we are just building this fantastic siege engine that’s going to attack your heart.
