These are not the DVDs the fans have been waiting for
Damon D | Rochester, NY USA | 09/15/2006
(3 out of 5 stars)
"You've been waiting over 10 years for the Tick to come out on DVD. You've eyed Amazon feverishly. You follow up every rumor. You even bought the live action disks.
And then, in seeming answer to your decade of diligent prayers and blue votive candles, it's finally here, and the package looks fan-freaking-tastic.
You call in sick to work, plunk yourself onto your sofa with a box of Lucky Charms, a gallon of milk, a cereal bowl, and your favorite SPOON! and prepare for a six hour TV-watching orgy.
You pop Disk 1 in the DVD player, and (once you get past all the ads) are nearly drowned by a wave of nostalgia. The main screen is full of animated eye candy, and you watch it at least a half dozen times. Finally you grab the remote and flip through the options.
That's odd... no special features. Must be on the other disk. I mean surely no one would release The Tick on DVD without acknowledging its origin as a comic book or its rabid cult following.
Hmm... now that's REALLY odd. There don't seem to be any commentary tracks either. You KNOW Edlund has things to say about the series. You've been scouring the Internet for Tick info since Mosaic was the only graphical web browser.
Well, you reason, all that other stuff is just parsley. The main course is the shows themselves.
So you push play on episode one, and you chuckle through the opening interview sequence, but something is niggling at you. Something doesn't look quite right, and yet the show looks exactly as you remember. It's not until the title sequence that it hits you so hard that you stop singing along in mid "Dum-dwee".
You pause to confirm your horror:
The reason this looks exactly like you remember from 10 years ago is because it's an analog-to-digital recording! Instead of recording from the original cells, the manufacturer recorded from video.
You sit there for a bit, stunned. They had 10 years to make this DVD, and this is the best they could do? Heck, it's not much better than the bootlegs you made with your first DVD-R. You don't really want to push play again. Your cereal has gone warm and mushy. After a bit you pick up the phone. "Yeah... it was just my sinuses. I'll be into the office in 30 minutes.""
Belated indeed, and butchered.
Matthew VanAndel | SoCal, USA | 06/01/2006
(4 out of 5 stars)
"Originally titled "The Tick: Season 1", this two disc set only included 12 of the first seasons 13 episodes. The missing episode is S1E11, "The Tick vs. The Mole-Men", in which The Tick and Arthur act as guide for a bunch of vacationing mole-men and their mole-king. When the mole-king falls in love with a Cindy Crawford lookalike, things get complicated. Disney swears the episode was left out for "creative reasons", which may have some truth as this episode is widely accepted as the weakest of the series - but some sort of legal complication is more likely (maybe they couldn't fit all 13 episodes on 2 discs?). The point is, don't expect any sort of definitive compilation here, this is Season 1 sans one episode. Maybe we'll see the Mole-Men episode as a bonus for Season 2 or, god forbid, a re-release of this Season 1 set."
Classic series. Horrendous DVD presentation.
Kevin H. Dudley | Roanoke, VA (USA) | 08/30/2006
(5 out of 5 stars)
"I, like tons of other people, have been anxiously awaiting for SOMEBODY to finally start releasing the classic cartoon of The Tick ever since the inception of DVD. It seemed like every single series was getting some kind of DVD attention except for this one.
Finally, someone answered our prayers and Season 1 of the animated Tick has been unleashed on DVD.
But there's a dark side to this.
First of all, this set is missing episode 11 "The Tick vs. The Mole Men" due to what is being labled "creative reasons" whatever in the hell that means. While I know this is regarded as one of the weakest episodes in the entire history, this isn't the full first season due to its ommision.
Secondly, the video quality is HORRIBLE. It literally looks someone took some high quality VHS copies of the show and just slapped them on a couple of DVD's. The colors are washed out & bland and there's a really annoying interlacing issue in almost every episode that causes most animation lines to "shimmer" a bit. The shimmering effect might not be quite as distracting on smaller TV sets, but on big screen sets it is really atrocious.
The sound is also muffled and tinny sounding. There's also little bits of missing dialogue here and there as well. I'm thinking that a few episodes might be cut slightly actually.
So, while I am glad whoever finally got off of their duff to release The Tick animated on DVD, I think that they could have done a much, much better job than this.
I hope they realize the error of their ways with Season 1 and really put forth a whole lot more effort on subsequent season releases.
The show itself gets a full 5 star rating from me but the DVD presentation gets a 1.
I wish that Amazon had a seperate rating system in which you could rate both the feature AND the DVD quality seperately."
"SPOOOOOOON!"
H. Bala | Carson - hey, we have an IKEA store! - CA USA | 08/04/2006
(5 out of 5 stars)
"For insane, sidesplitting superheroics, nothing - but nothing - beats the Tick. This short-lived animated show which debuted in 1994 centers on an overly muscular, eternally optimistic, blue buffoon with a penchant for melodramatic, pseudo-inspirational speeches full of eschewed, left-field metaphors. The Tick also isn't too securely grounded in reality. But he's superstrong and well nigh invulnerable. And, hey, he's got wicked cool antennas.
He is housed and abetted by Arthur, a paunchy accountant who sidejobs as the Moth(man), Tick's long-suffering, more rational (ie: sane) sidekick. Arthur habitually goes around in a white bodysuit with appendages on his head that makes people think he's a cute bunny-wabbit (his wings are normally retracted in a powerpack on his back). With the half-hearted help of a loose knit group of super friends, Arthur and the ever enthusiastic Tick ply their crime-stopping trade in a besieged city called...the City.
The Tick's first season episodes (actually, EVERY seasons' episodes) are chock full of bizarre superfelons and equally batty superheroes. Some of these goofballs are parodies of famous superfolks (the egotistical Die Fledermaus is patterned after Batman, the hyper-efficient American Maid is obviously Wonder Woman, the Civic Minded Five are tailored after the Fantastic Four, etc). But there isn't a lack of original characters, mostly in the super-villain sector: Chairface Chippendale (a crime kingpin with the head of a chair), the human sunflower El Seed, Brainchild (a boy genius who's half-heartedly following a life of crime), and the crazy cool Evil Midnight Bomber What Bombs at Midnight.
One of the high points of the series is the Tick's inevitable pontificating. Check out Big Blue's funny and warped morale-boosting rally cries: "Let's hang ten for justice!", "And so, may Evil beware and may Good dress warmly and eat plenty of fresh vegetables," "Don't ever try to swim against the mighty tide of justice." There are so many quotable comments here, it's insane. There's the Tick's intimidating battlecry: "Spoooon!" Or, some goons find out that Arthur's a sidekick: "Alright, boys. Let's kick him to the side!" Sorry, but that one cracks me up.
The Tick is obtuse, naive, and might even be clinically insane. I mean, he's got a piece of wood he talks to and calls Little Wooden Boy ("You wouldn't lie to me, would you, Little Wooden Boy?"). But creator Ben Edlund has a blast utilizing him as the focal point in his subversive razzings of the superhero biz. The show is funny on the slapstick surface, but its wit and sophistication go deeper than that.
The voice talents of the two leads are invaluable. Townsend Coleman's heroic, masculine and exuberant voice perfectly personifies the Tick, while Micky Dolenz (yes, the Monkee's Micky Dolenz) ably complements him as the put-upon Arthur. I won't even try to pick out favorite episodes. They are all across-the-board EXCELLENT! I will say that the debut episode "Tick Vs. the Idea Men" is where the Tick first comes to the City and meets Arthur. This animated series is even better than the live action Tick series which came later in 2001. Do NOT miss this one.
"