Ben Edlund is a comedy genius. I first discovered his comic book, The Tick, when New England Comics put in one of their ads A combination of The Punisher and Wolverine! I was pulled in by this gimmick only to find that The Tick had more in common with Bob Burdens Flaming Carrot and Sergio Aragons Groo the Wanderer. The Tick is a mysterious big blue wall of justice with his sidekick Arthur. Through 12 issues over five years The Tick became a major cult figure and in 1994 The Tick was turned into a Saturday morning cartoon. After three fun filled years the show was cancelled but The Tick cropped up later in a mishandled live action series. Now finally the first season of The Tick [minus one episode] will be coming out on DVD on August 29.
But besides creating The Tick, Ben Edlund is a bit of mystery himself. Hes worked on some fantastic television including Angel, Firefly and The Venture Bros which was created by one of his old collaborators Christopher McCulloch. For the past couple of years Edlund has been a journeyman on genre shows such as Point Pleasant. But we can all cross our fingers and hope his next creation gets on TV.
Buy The Tick cartoon series DVD
Daniel Robert Epstein: Its a pleasure to talk to you. Ive been a fan for a long time.
Ben Edlund: Thank you. Let me apologize again for how difficult it has been for us to get to talk.
DRE: Thats alright. I remember how long it took for issues of The Tick to come out.
Ben: Yes, now you see a connective pattern. Its not that far off.
DRE: So youre working on The CW show Supernatural, what are you doing exactly?
Ben: I dont even really know what Im called. I might be a consulting producer. I just came on to help out and now I am working on one of the first five scripts. I think Im in the rotation so Ill help as much as I can.
DRE: How did Disney end up buying the Tick cartoon?
Ben: Its a pretty complicated chain. Fox Kids was the initial owner of the rights for the cartoon and then they got into a strange deal with Haim Saban the producer of the Power Rangers. I think he gave them a million dollar loan or something like that so they could buy the Family Channel. In exchange they gave him part of their cartoon library as collateral. So at a certain point one way or another, Disney ended up inheriting those rights. I wasnt really part of any of the deals or exchanges. But then Disney had the rights to the cartoon and the library of a lot of others from what was initially Fox Kids library. Every time someones come to me and said, Can we do this or that with The Tick? Ive gone to my lawyer and said, Can someone do this or that with The Tick? Then they have to pull out all the contracts and read through them again. There were a lot of partners involved in the cartoon when it first got on the air and then when the live action hit the air it shook everything up and the rights got divided again and Sony bought some.
DRE: Why are there no extras on the DVD?
Ben: Im not a hundred percent sure. The DVD is a very stripped down barebones release. As far as I understand it has only 12 of the 13 episodes and doesnt really have a lot of extras. I think their plan is to release the seasons individually and then milk it further by releasing a collection of the whole series. I suppose at that point there will be more frills on it.
DRE: Are there many extras to be had?
Ben: There are things that could go on somewhere. I was once going to be the voice of The Tick because there was a flurry of creator voiced cartoons at the time such as Howie Mandel doing Bobby's World for Fox Kids. We had such difficulty casting The Tick that at one point they said, Oh you should do The Tick. So we actually recorded the pilot with me as The Tick. I cant find that tape but someone might have it. [laughs] It might be interesting.
DRE: [laughs] How did you do?
Ben: It was terrible. I fired myself a moment after I heard the entire tape. But not long after that we found Townsend Coleman and he was perfect, so I think I made the right decision. But since it is a cartoon most of the extras are production drawings, storyboards, the scripts from what was supposed to be the fourth season of the series that we finished but havent really seen the light of day, although I think they float around on the internet from time to time. If it was a live action show obviously wed have a lot more outtakes and stuff like that. Everything was done to code there wasnt really a lot of raw footage that was shot. One would think that commentary would be a pretty basic thing that one would include. We havent scheduled anything so well just see what they choose to do.
DRE: When the cartoon first came on the air I wasnt sure if Townsend was the right guy for it. But I really grew to love his take. What made you feel that he was right?
Ben: A combination of sincerity and the right register that wasnt too deep. Since The Tick is childlike we didnt want him to have too much authority oddly enough. I had never really heard The Ticks voice before apart from my own voice when I was writing. But Townsend had done tons of voiceovers so he was able to handle all the nutty word combinations we threw at him. As much of a goofball as The Tick is, he has islands of intelligence, which I thought Townsend represented. We had seen about 120 people before we cast Townsend.
DRE: Who teamed you up with Richard Liebmann-Smith?
Ben: That was Sunbow in New York. They understood that this was not a typical cartoon, which I credit them with, so they were looking for a good combination. At that point I was just a consultant and they were trying to find someone that could function as the East Coast story editor. They made the interesting choice of Richard Liebmann-Smith. He was the psychology editor at a science magazine and a humorist who had written primarily for things like Playboy, Harpers Bazaar and The New Yorker. It was an interesting choice where cartoons were concerned but it worked really well. Richard and I wrote three seasons together. It was cool.
DRE: Did you guys connect right away?
Ben: I think so. We get along very well. Our partnership as primary story editors really didnt matter so much until Fox came to the whole process and said, The script isnt working. You either have to revolutionize it or were going to pick a different pilot. So Richard and I were able to step away from the whole committee process and spend a three day weekend together just writing like mad. That cemented our feeling that we were a team which was pretty good because the next time we heard from Fox they wanted to buy the show.
DRE: Do you have any idea why The Tick vs. the Mole-Men isnt on this DVD release?
Ben: From what I understand its got something to do with copyright character infringement. I dont really know which character that would be. The only ones I could think of would be like the Mole-Men or something to do with the Lava Man. But the Lava Man is just a Lava Man. Its possible that somewhere in the great history of Mole-Men someone finally nabbed the exclusive copyrights to them. But in my opinion the Mole Men preceded televised entertainment [laughs]. I cant get to why in particular that episode has been excluded. Im trying to get to the bottom of it just so that I can have a better answer for folks like yourself.
DRE: Do you have a favorite episode from the first season?
Ben: I like the last one, The Tick vs. Arthur's Bank Account, because it seemed to be pulled off really well. I like Dinosaur Neil a lot because of the big pants [laughs]. I like moments that are just baffling when you get in but they all work to some degree or another. I dont know if I have one episode thats my favorite but I have moments in episodes that I think are really ideal.
DRE: Obviously there are moments in the cartoon that are taken directly from the comics. Do you feel like they translated well?
Ben: Its weird how few of the comic book stories really made it in because the structure of the cartoon was based on that every act break there had to be some action piece that makes you want to come back. There was very little action in the comic book. There were some fights time to time but mostly it was bemoaning the life of villains or wandering around trying to get a car. They had small problems in the comic book and in the cartoon it had to be ratcheted up to be more of a superhero show. I think that the Comet Club and Barry as the alternate Tick translated pretty well. Also the way The Terror and his Evileers functioned was pretty much where the comic book series was going to head. We never were able to translate the ninjas satisfactorily, which is surprising but it just never seemed to make enough sense. Mostly we ended up relying on a new generation of characters and ideas when we were working on the series.
DRE: Was the origin of Arthurs suit in the cartoon the same origin that was going to be in the comics?
Ben: I think in issue number 11 Arthur meets this woman outside of a hotel where Arthur and The Tick are staying. She was intended to be more or less who Carmelita became. It was a little more complicated but she had a less refined version of the suit that Arthur had and she wanted Arthurs because her father invented them. So there was a similar story germ that we ended up explaining a little bit. I think in the comic book I was planning on making her neither good nor bad. She would have been more of a foil for conflict and in the cartoon she ended up being Arthurs semi love interest. So they stemmed from the same source but they went different ways. One actually went, the other one didnt.
DRE: I was supposed to have a letter printed in the 13th issue of The Tick.
Ben: Oh no.
DRE: Yeah. I got a call from your publisher and he was just like, your letters going to be in. I was like, Awesome. [laughs]
Ben: [laughs] Ive heard that question for a long time, Wheres the 13th issue of The Tick? But I think all these years may have put it to death.
DRE: What was the reason for Fox canceling the Tick?
Ben: Basically they were no longer able to hide from their advertisers that 52 percent of our audience was adults so everyone who bought time on the Fox Saturday morning block was trying to sell cereal and toys which are things that an adult audience wasnt really going to buy. As far as advertising dollars were concerned it cut our ratings in half because we are only able to sell cereal into the mouths of babes at 48 percent out of 100 [laughs]. That probably was a big part of it and we were in the midst of making a transition to a new story editing staff so that Richard and I could work on a Tick cartoon feature, but that evaporated. When it finally was canceled Id been working for four years pretty much non-stop so there was part of me that sighed relief just to get off it for a while. But it probably would have been better to do another couple more seasons so that it would be more of a thing but yet it still refuses to go away.
DRE: I remember reading a minor complaint you had years ago that you were hoping to make The Tick cartoon more for adults than for kids.
Ben: Yeah, it ended up being a challenge to have it be on Saturday mornings and still keep it sophisticated enough so we could keep that other audience. So because we were big kids we treated the main characters like big kids. Theres a sweetness in there that I think is appropriate for this character that might have been burnt off if it was done as a Comedy Central cartoon or something. I think that the live action show suffered a bit from an attempt to ratchet up sophistication by bringing in sex and things like that. All of those things could exist in there but they didnt fit the way they were used in live action. So its style was uneven but there was something about the cartoon sensibility that because of all pressures from broadcast standards and all these other factors bearing down on the show that made it into what I feel like is a successful sensibility.
DRE: Was the merchandising successful?
Ben: I think some of it was successful in terms of creating objects that will puzzle yard sale goers in 2015 but it wasnt a breakout merchandising success. I think the action figures did ok but they didnt generate that second wave of money that gets all the marketing people excited. I would say it had a fairly sub-average merchandising career.
DRE: Do you still own the comic rights to The Tick?
Ben: I do. That is subject to all the material that was in the comic book but anything specific to the cartoon is owned by that long chain of different owners that I described before and now residing in the Disney coffer.
DRE: I remember you wrote on The Tick comics letters page that you wouldnt want The Tick to be the only thing youre remembered for.
Ben: That would be sad, I guess. It would be nice to be remembered though [laughs]. I am trying to get better at what I do and figure out what Im supposed to be doing.
DRE: We havent seen anything purely Ben Edlund for many years.
Ben: Thats true. The way Ive thought about it is for a number of years Ive been going to film school. I had dropped out of actual film school to go do the cartoon and there were a lot of live action things that I really didnt know. So through the Joss Whedon shows and even through the last year and a half Ive been just picking up skills and so forth but I dont think there has been anything to refer to as strictly a Ben Edlund venture in a long time. I have my own ventures at home but they just sit there. Im working on a pilot now thats based on an idea that I came up with last year. If it goes well, it will maybe air on The Sci-Fi channel. But they have to decide whether or not that is the case. Its basically the rat race of television and you never really can tell what will be selected and what will not.
DRE: Can you tell me what the pilot is about?
Ben: I probably shouldnt yet because I dont know where Sci-Fi stands on that.
DRE: Will the show have that fun, stupid, somehow witty humor to it or is it going to be straighter?
Ben: It will have a version of that humor, maybe a little bit quieter. It wont be as bombastic as the Tick was. This will be quieter and have a little more feeling but I would like to insert moments of absurdity.
DRE: I remember the pictures of you in the editorial part of the comic and you always looked pretty sullen. Is The Tick your sense of humor?
Ben: The Tick is a mental plaything of mine. It incorporates a lot of humor where people yell at each other. The people are loud and the scenes are loud. Its like Get Smart in a way. Its heightened and silly. Not everything I like is like that and I like to do other stuff. I respond to a lot of stuff that is closer to the ground and more, lets say naturalistic or something. But that is definitely an area of humor that I have a lot of affinity for. Its one of my favorites, this goofball, stupid stuff which manages to stay smart somehow [laughs].
DRE: Do you have interest in doing any new Tick related stuff?
Ben: Eventually I might. Im just really busy trying to learn how to really write. I dont think that The Tick is not really writing but I want to figure out how to really work with a character and so forth. But the whole Tick thing is starting to get a whole new set of people taking a look at it.
DRE: Would you want do a DVD movie or a feature cartoon?
Ben: I think that might be the coolest thing to do because live action is cool but its not the essence of what The Tick was. The Incredibles did a large part of what The Tick might do like the mundane life of a superhero. So Im going to give it a little bit of time to get some newness to it and then I think a conventional feature would be probably the coolest thing. Although I own the stage musical rights so thats something to consider.
DRE: [laughs] Its possible.
I read that you felt Paul the Samurai was one of your favorite characters. Would you ever want to do anything with Paul or Man Eating Cow?
Ben: It would have to be idea driven. If I suddenly had the perfect idea for what Paul or the Cow should go through then that might be something. But it takes a long time. It took me five years to put out 12 issues.
DRE: But they always sold well when they came out.
Ben: Yeah, they went really well. It was nuts. It was exactly what youre not supposed to do in independent publishing but I never got slapped for it [laughs].
DRE: Whered you grow up?
Ben: I grew up in Pembroke, Massachusetts probably about four towns away from where New England Comics had started out in Boston. When I was 17 my brother drove me over to the store to start my business relationship with them. I brought all my drawings I had done while playing Dungeons and Dragons. I laid them out in front of [New England Comics art director] Bob Polio and soon I was on retainer.
DRE: What made you change from the furry Tick to the more streamlined Tick?
Ben: Partly because it was harder to draw that and also it wasnt really a superhero. He was too far from the superhero molds to truly be a member in a way. I wanted him to be as generic as he could be. Ultimately when I started to think about who this guy should be for a series of comic books I was all into him being brown because ticks are brown. But Bob Polio was very strongly behind the notion of him being blue just to be closer to the superhero mold. So I painted one brown and another blue and found that blue worked better so I went with his advice. He started to lose fur as the series began and moved on and became more and more like an action figure, a plastic giant man.
DRE: Im only going to ask one Titan A.E. question. There was a joke in Titan A.E. that was from the letters page of The Tick comics.
Ben: What was that?
DRE: It was calling the planet Susan.
Ben: Oh right, which wasnt my joke by the way. I dont know who put that in. There were eight writers on Titan A.E.
DRE: Joss Whedon told me that youre reserved and youre not needy therefore you make other writers nervous.
Ben: I do make people a little nervous because Im a really nervous person. I might seem reserved but Im mostly scratching all the gray material off the lining of my skull inside so I just stay quiet as much as possible to try and protect other people [laughs]. Im not a comfortable person. But thats ok, Im getting used to it. I dont know exactly why I might make a person nervous but thats just bound to happen [laughs].
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
But besides creating The Tick, Ben Edlund is a bit of mystery himself. Hes worked on some fantastic television including Angel, Firefly and The Venture Bros which was created by one of his old collaborators Christopher McCulloch. For the past couple of years Edlund has been a journeyman on genre shows such as Point Pleasant. But we can all cross our fingers and hope his next creation gets on TV.
Buy The Tick cartoon series DVD
Daniel Robert Epstein: Its a pleasure to talk to you. Ive been a fan for a long time.
Ben Edlund: Thank you. Let me apologize again for how difficult it has been for us to get to talk.
DRE: Thats alright. I remember how long it took for issues of The Tick to come out.
Ben: Yes, now you see a connective pattern. Its not that far off.
DRE: So youre working on The CW show Supernatural, what are you doing exactly?
Ben: I dont even really know what Im called. I might be a consulting producer. I just came on to help out and now I am working on one of the first five scripts. I think Im in the rotation so Ill help as much as I can.
DRE: How did Disney end up buying the Tick cartoon?
Ben: Its a pretty complicated chain. Fox Kids was the initial owner of the rights for the cartoon and then they got into a strange deal with Haim Saban the producer of the Power Rangers. I think he gave them a million dollar loan or something like that so they could buy the Family Channel. In exchange they gave him part of their cartoon library as collateral. So at a certain point one way or another, Disney ended up inheriting those rights. I wasnt really part of any of the deals or exchanges. But then Disney had the rights to the cartoon and the library of a lot of others from what was initially Fox Kids library. Every time someones come to me and said, Can we do this or that with The Tick? Ive gone to my lawyer and said, Can someone do this or that with The Tick? Then they have to pull out all the contracts and read through them again. There were a lot of partners involved in the cartoon when it first got on the air and then when the live action hit the air it shook everything up and the rights got divided again and Sony bought some.
DRE: Why are there no extras on the DVD?
Ben: Im not a hundred percent sure. The DVD is a very stripped down barebones release. As far as I understand it has only 12 of the 13 episodes and doesnt really have a lot of extras. I think their plan is to release the seasons individually and then milk it further by releasing a collection of the whole series. I suppose at that point there will be more frills on it.
DRE: Are there many extras to be had?
Ben: There are things that could go on somewhere. I was once going to be the voice of The Tick because there was a flurry of creator voiced cartoons at the time such as Howie Mandel doing Bobby's World for Fox Kids. We had such difficulty casting The Tick that at one point they said, Oh you should do The Tick. So we actually recorded the pilot with me as The Tick. I cant find that tape but someone might have it. [laughs] It might be interesting.
DRE: [laughs] How did you do?
Ben: It was terrible. I fired myself a moment after I heard the entire tape. But not long after that we found Townsend Coleman and he was perfect, so I think I made the right decision. But since it is a cartoon most of the extras are production drawings, storyboards, the scripts from what was supposed to be the fourth season of the series that we finished but havent really seen the light of day, although I think they float around on the internet from time to time. If it was a live action show obviously wed have a lot more outtakes and stuff like that. Everything was done to code there wasnt really a lot of raw footage that was shot. One would think that commentary would be a pretty basic thing that one would include. We havent scheduled anything so well just see what they choose to do.
DRE: When the cartoon first came on the air I wasnt sure if Townsend was the right guy for it. But I really grew to love his take. What made you feel that he was right?
Ben: A combination of sincerity and the right register that wasnt too deep. Since The Tick is childlike we didnt want him to have too much authority oddly enough. I had never really heard The Ticks voice before apart from my own voice when I was writing. But Townsend had done tons of voiceovers so he was able to handle all the nutty word combinations we threw at him. As much of a goofball as The Tick is, he has islands of intelligence, which I thought Townsend represented. We had seen about 120 people before we cast Townsend.
DRE: Who teamed you up with Richard Liebmann-Smith?
Ben: That was Sunbow in New York. They understood that this was not a typical cartoon, which I credit them with, so they were looking for a good combination. At that point I was just a consultant and they were trying to find someone that could function as the East Coast story editor. They made the interesting choice of Richard Liebmann-Smith. He was the psychology editor at a science magazine and a humorist who had written primarily for things like Playboy, Harpers Bazaar and The New Yorker. It was an interesting choice where cartoons were concerned but it worked really well. Richard and I wrote three seasons together. It was cool.
DRE: Did you guys connect right away?
Ben: I think so. We get along very well. Our partnership as primary story editors really didnt matter so much until Fox came to the whole process and said, The script isnt working. You either have to revolutionize it or were going to pick a different pilot. So Richard and I were able to step away from the whole committee process and spend a three day weekend together just writing like mad. That cemented our feeling that we were a team which was pretty good because the next time we heard from Fox they wanted to buy the show.
DRE: Do you have any idea why The Tick vs. the Mole-Men isnt on this DVD release?
Ben: From what I understand its got something to do with copyright character infringement. I dont really know which character that would be. The only ones I could think of would be like the Mole-Men or something to do with the Lava Man. But the Lava Man is just a Lava Man. Its possible that somewhere in the great history of Mole-Men someone finally nabbed the exclusive copyrights to them. But in my opinion the Mole Men preceded televised entertainment [laughs]. I cant get to why in particular that episode has been excluded. Im trying to get to the bottom of it just so that I can have a better answer for folks like yourself.
DRE: Do you have a favorite episode from the first season?
Ben: I like the last one, The Tick vs. Arthur's Bank Account, because it seemed to be pulled off really well. I like Dinosaur Neil a lot because of the big pants [laughs]. I like moments that are just baffling when you get in but they all work to some degree or another. I dont know if I have one episode thats my favorite but I have moments in episodes that I think are really ideal.
DRE: Obviously there are moments in the cartoon that are taken directly from the comics. Do you feel like they translated well?
Ben: Its weird how few of the comic book stories really made it in because the structure of the cartoon was based on that every act break there had to be some action piece that makes you want to come back. There was very little action in the comic book. There were some fights time to time but mostly it was bemoaning the life of villains or wandering around trying to get a car. They had small problems in the comic book and in the cartoon it had to be ratcheted up to be more of a superhero show. I think that the Comet Club and Barry as the alternate Tick translated pretty well. Also the way The Terror and his Evileers functioned was pretty much where the comic book series was going to head. We never were able to translate the ninjas satisfactorily, which is surprising but it just never seemed to make enough sense. Mostly we ended up relying on a new generation of characters and ideas when we were working on the series.
DRE: Was the origin of Arthurs suit in the cartoon the same origin that was going to be in the comics?
Ben: I think in issue number 11 Arthur meets this woman outside of a hotel where Arthur and The Tick are staying. She was intended to be more or less who Carmelita became. It was a little more complicated but she had a less refined version of the suit that Arthur had and she wanted Arthurs because her father invented them. So there was a similar story germ that we ended up explaining a little bit. I think in the comic book I was planning on making her neither good nor bad. She would have been more of a foil for conflict and in the cartoon she ended up being Arthurs semi love interest. So they stemmed from the same source but they went different ways. One actually went, the other one didnt.
DRE: I was supposed to have a letter printed in the 13th issue of The Tick.
Ben: Oh no.
DRE: Yeah. I got a call from your publisher and he was just like, your letters going to be in. I was like, Awesome. [laughs]
Ben: [laughs] Ive heard that question for a long time, Wheres the 13th issue of The Tick? But I think all these years may have put it to death.
DRE: What was the reason for Fox canceling the Tick?
Ben: Basically they were no longer able to hide from their advertisers that 52 percent of our audience was adults so everyone who bought time on the Fox Saturday morning block was trying to sell cereal and toys which are things that an adult audience wasnt really going to buy. As far as advertising dollars were concerned it cut our ratings in half because we are only able to sell cereal into the mouths of babes at 48 percent out of 100 [laughs]. That probably was a big part of it and we were in the midst of making a transition to a new story editing staff so that Richard and I could work on a Tick cartoon feature, but that evaporated. When it finally was canceled Id been working for four years pretty much non-stop so there was part of me that sighed relief just to get off it for a while. But it probably would have been better to do another couple more seasons so that it would be more of a thing but yet it still refuses to go away.
DRE: I remember reading a minor complaint you had years ago that you were hoping to make The Tick cartoon more for adults than for kids.
Ben: Yeah, it ended up being a challenge to have it be on Saturday mornings and still keep it sophisticated enough so we could keep that other audience. So because we were big kids we treated the main characters like big kids. Theres a sweetness in there that I think is appropriate for this character that might have been burnt off if it was done as a Comedy Central cartoon or something. I think that the live action show suffered a bit from an attempt to ratchet up sophistication by bringing in sex and things like that. All of those things could exist in there but they didnt fit the way they were used in live action. So its style was uneven but there was something about the cartoon sensibility that because of all pressures from broadcast standards and all these other factors bearing down on the show that made it into what I feel like is a successful sensibility.
DRE: Was the merchandising successful?
Ben: I think some of it was successful in terms of creating objects that will puzzle yard sale goers in 2015 but it wasnt a breakout merchandising success. I think the action figures did ok but they didnt generate that second wave of money that gets all the marketing people excited. I would say it had a fairly sub-average merchandising career.
DRE: Do you still own the comic rights to The Tick?
Ben: I do. That is subject to all the material that was in the comic book but anything specific to the cartoon is owned by that long chain of different owners that I described before and now residing in the Disney coffer.
DRE: I remember you wrote on The Tick comics letters page that you wouldnt want The Tick to be the only thing youre remembered for.
Ben: That would be sad, I guess. It would be nice to be remembered though [laughs]. I am trying to get better at what I do and figure out what Im supposed to be doing.
DRE: We havent seen anything purely Ben Edlund for many years.
Ben: Thats true. The way Ive thought about it is for a number of years Ive been going to film school. I had dropped out of actual film school to go do the cartoon and there were a lot of live action things that I really didnt know. So through the Joss Whedon shows and even through the last year and a half Ive been just picking up skills and so forth but I dont think there has been anything to refer to as strictly a Ben Edlund venture in a long time. I have my own ventures at home but they just sit there. Im working on a pilot now thats based on an idea that I came up with last year. If it goes well, it will maybe air on The Sci-Fi channel. But they have to decide whether or not that is the case. Its basically the rat race of television and you never really can tell what will be selected and what will not.
DRE: Can you tell me what the pilot is about?
Ben: I probably shouldnt yet because I dont know where Sci-Fi stands on that.
DRE: Will the show have that fun, stupid, somehow witty humor to it or is it going to be straighter?
Ben: It will have a version of that humor, maybe a little bit quieter. It wont be as bombastic as the Tick was. This will be quieter and have a little more feeling but I would like to insert moments of absurdity.
DRE: I remember the pictures of you in the editorial part of the comic and you always looked pretty sullen. Is The Tick your sense of humor?
Ben: The Tick is a mental plaything of mine. It incorporates a lot of humor where people yell at each other. The people are loud and the scenes are loud. Its like Get Smart in a way. Its heightened and silly. Not everything I like is like that and I like to do other stuff. I respond to a lot of stuff that is closer to the ground and more, lets say naturalistic or something. But that is definitely an area of humor that I have a lot of affinity for. Its one of my favorites, this goofball, stupid stuff which manages to stay smart somehow [laughs].
DRE: Do you have interest in doing any new Tick related stuff?
Ben: Eventually I might. Im just really busy trying to learn how to really write. I dont think that The Tick is not really writing but I want to figure out how to really work with a character and so forth. But the whole Tick thing is starting to get a whole new set of people taking a look at it.
DRE: Would you want do a DVD movie or a feature cartoon?
Ben: I think that might be the coolest thing to do because live action is cool but its not the essence of what The Tick was. The Incredibles did a large part of what The Tick might do like the mundane life of a superhero. So Im going to give it a little bit of time to get some newness to it and then I think a conventional feature would be probably the coolest thing. Although I own the stage musical rights so thats something to consider.
DRE: [laughs] Its possible.
I read that you felt Paul the Samurai was one of your favorite characters. Would you ever want to do anything with Paul or Man Eating Cow?
Ben: It would have to be idea driven. If I suddenly had the perfect idea for what Paul or the Cow should go through then that might be something. But it takes a long time. It took me five years to put out 12 issues.
DRE: But they always sold well when they came out.
Ben: Yeah, they went really well. It was nuts. It was exactly what youre not supposed to do in independent publishing but I never got slapped for it [laughs].
DRE: Whered you grow up?
Ben: I grew up in Pembroke, Massachusetts probably about four towns away from where New England Comics had started out in Boston. When I was 17 my brother drove me over to the store to start my business relationship with them. I brought all my drawings I had done while playing Dungeons and Dragons. I laid them out in front of [New England Comics art director] Bob Polio and soon I was on retainer.
DRE: What made you change from the furry Tick to the more streamlined Tick?
Ben: Partly because it was harder to draw that and also it wasnt really a superhero. He was too far from the superhero molds to truly be a member in a way. I wanted him to be as generic as he could be. Ultimately when I started to think about who this guy should be for a series of comic books I was all into him being brown because ticks are brown. But Bob Polio was very strongly behind the notion of him being blue just to be closer to the superhero mold. So I painted one brown and another blue and found that blue worked better so I went with his advice. He started to lose fur as the series began and moved on and became more and more like an action figure, a plastic giant man.
DRE: Im only going to ask one Titan A.E. question. There was a joke in Titan A.E. that was from the letters page of The Tick comics.
Ben: What was that?
DRE: It was calling the planet Susan.
Ben: Oh right, which wasnt my joke by the way. I dont know who put that in. There were eight writers on Titan A.E.
DRE: Joss Whedon told me that youre reserved and youre not needy therefore you make other writers nervous.
Ben: I do make people a little nervous because Im a really nervous person. I might seem reserved but Im mostly scratching all the gray material off the lining of my skull inside so I just stay quiet as much as possible to try and protect other people [laughs]. Im not a comfortable person. But thats ok, Im getting used to it. I dont know exactly why I might make a person nervous but thats just bound to happen [laughs].
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
VIEW 25 of 25 COMMENTS
taped off tv. I need to find that. See if it's still viewable.
I remember the villain with a pig for a leg and the hot air balloon.
haha.
spoooooooooooooooooooooooooooon!