What I find most interesting about the Tick, at least as an artistic endeavor, is that he has evolved in much the same way as The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. There are all these different version of the same basic story, told and retold while, one supposes, the creator keeps trying to perfect things. The very first version of the Tick was presented in comics, and in this case in the graphic novelization of those comics, The Naked City. (Although, since it’s colorized, I’m still not technically reading the very originalest version of the story.)

But who, you ask, is the Tick? He’s a superhero parody, is the short version. He’s a moderately insane, somewhat simple-minded, bumbling, incredibly strong and nigh invulnerable guy in a skin-tight blue outfit, with inexplicable antennae, who has appointed himself as guardian of The City. That “guardianship” basically means that he leaps around rooftops, causing an alarming amount of structural damage and looking for evil to fight. Despite himself, he usually finds it.

Populated with a boatload of ninjas and somewhat amateurishly literal parodies of Superman, Elektra and Kingpin, it’s pretty easy to tell this is the beginning of the story. The good news is that the absurdist humor is already reasonably solid, and by the last issue Edlund is starting to find his own more thematic-parody voice. I should find me the rest of the comic’s run. And the animated series. And probably the live action one? I wonder if there’s other stuff I’m not aware of. Perhaps a commemorative Tick silverware set?