The Tick Specials: The Complete Works

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The Tick Specials: The Complete Works
By Zak Edwards
January 21, 2010 - 18:31

New England Comics
Writer(s): Sean Wang, Marc Silvia, and Clay & Susan Griffith
Penciller(s): Various
Inker(s): Various
$35.00 US

A collection of Tick specials is hardly an easy piece to review. For one thing, the whole book is like a collection of short stories by various artists and writers, like reviewing an edition of McSweeneys, and are destined to be a collection of good and bad. Unfortunately, that is just what The Tick Specials: The Complete Works is, some good, some bad, and some mediocre. There are gems and there are stories needing just a couple of more rewrites and there are some that are just plain bad, but overall the collection is worth it for those interested in the entire mythos of the Tick. But for the casual reader, this omnibus is not worth it over something like the omnibus of all the original comic books by Ben Edlund, or the recently released first volume of the complete colour issues. I will try to make some overarching opinions using specific examples, but this review is not going to cover every story in much detail, there just isn't the room!

One particularly interesting point about this book is how certain creators more than stories stand out. By the time I was halfway through it didn’t take long to recognize Marc Silvia’s writing, especially in the longer story arc where his writing was in sharp contrast to the generally disappointing continuations by the team of Clay and Susan Griffith. Sean Wang’s stories (the first four plus the story about Hanukkah) really start the book out with a bang. The conspiracy of a rebel elf and the appearance of Santa in a sort of oppressive employer and worldwide conspirator is by no means original, but Wang focuses on the laughs the Tick can bring from such an offbeat but fairly normal idea. The story itself too, for all its absurdity, follows a fairly basic evil genius plot as well, complete with the creation of a sort of robot, or coal monster in this case, the hero needs to defeat. The Tick, of course, defeats the monster with his brute strength and Santa makes an off panel appearance for some discipline of his rogue elf. The story is charming and in keeping with what these tales generally represent, which is some lighthearted, one-shots to consume over the holidays. Similarly, the Tick’s retelling of the story of Hanukkah is equally hilarious in its craziness and light-heartedness. Wang keeps a similar tone throughout his stories. Moments of genius continue through Wang’s stories and I found myself laughing out loud when rereading the stories simply because of how his humour works. Wang’s humour is similar to original creator Ben Edlund’s in having both a heavy-handed and forward style as well as a more subtle form in more of the background or a little wordplay or witty comments. His school special has moments of smaller humour, like the Tick getting bullied in a very classic way or the ongoing subplot of Arthur forced to be the undercover janitor and clean up (literally instead of metaphorically) after the Tick’s attempts to complete his mission. Other times, the humour is quite straight forward and still funny, like the Tick throwing a food tray and screaming “Eat creamed justice, teen miscreants!” The best story of Wang’s has to be the summer camp story, which is packed full of terribly hilarious moments, too many to recount here. Wang’s stories are light but still well crafted stories which are perfect one-shot specials, just as Silvia’s stories which make up the next part of the omnibus.

Marc Silvia’s one-shot stories are fairly enjoyable, looking at the expanded universe created by Edlund. Silvia’s first two stories focus more on the former Tick (Barry Hubris, his story is in the Complete Edlund Omnibus) and the Chainsaw Vigilante, even pitting the two against each other for one issue. The shifted focus works well even though the Tick himself is present throughout the issues. The Chainsaw Vigilante pitted against the Tick quickly reaches crazy proportions, involving a giant robot and ending in a Monty Python-esque sudden shut down by the authorities just before it gets really crazy. The Christmas special involving the alien supervillain Tuun-La being invited over is very funny if only a little repetitive. The repetition is played up in the story though, with certain gags recurring to emphasize parts of the story. Overall, these stories leading up to the giant special seven issue arc are more or less entertaining, literally. They work for the most part and these one-shots make up the bulk of the quality in this omnibus. Despite the inevitability for compilations of this to contain moments of brilliance and moments of simply awful, the one-shots really are quite entertaining and overall very strong works.

The seven issue spanning story takes up over a third of the 450 page omnibus and is fairly annoying rather than enjoyable. Certainly the story has its moments, mostly in Marc Silva’s work over the issues written by Clay and Susan Griffith, like the initial American Idol-esque quest to find a new member for the super-hero team. Given what other writers can accomplish in seven regular sized issues over seven giant specials, the whole arc feels incredibly shallow and underdeveloped. The story moves very quickly, initially playing off a similar story found in the original Tick run by Edlund where a up and coming superhero hires a supervillain to increase his publicity and generate some positive PR. The ‘behind the scenes’ view works a little differently here, but still feels quite borrowed, as the story continues on a much more extrapolated version of the original. The inevitable happens and the whole arrangement is ruined by an unscheduled cruise ship hijacking. Like I said, some moments are gems, but they are largely off to the side in ways. For example, the ongoing joke of one character, Portuguese Man-O-War, drowning his sorrows at the bar with a very evil looking bartender. His later absolute dedication to finding Fishboy, even when he has a girl throwing herself at him is also hilarious if not mostly unrelated to the main plot. In all honesty, this story lacked much of the charm the original series had and replaced it with a story much too big and much too unfocused, unfortunate considering the amount of the omnibus this story takes up.

As with all compilations taking many different works by many different creators, the quality is varied throughout. Despite this, The Tick Specials: The Complete Works does manage to entertain for much of the 440+ pages, which is a feat in itself. There are moments of sheer brilliance, like Arthur and The Tick’s conversation about office gerbils, and there are moments which do not work at all, like the art of the last Halloween special, and there are moments which straddle the well done line, like the seven-issue story arc. I would really only recommend this book to the most dedicated of Tick fans for whom first appearances (there are over 50 of those here) and completeness really matter. With these omnibuses, your money may be spent better elsewhere, like the Complete Color or Complete Man-Eating Cow (reviews coming soon!).