While The Boys and Invincible have managed to become the go-to superhero shows on Prime Video, there is another series that subverts the genre and deserves so much more attention. The Boys began streaming on Prime Video back in 2019, and since then, the series has completed a stellar five-season arc that kept fans coming back again and again to watch as the tyrannical Homelander rose and fell.
However, despite Homelander’s spectacular powers striking fear into the hearts of every other supe in the show, Prime Video’s alternative superhero show also boasts a leading hero who could challenge Homelander and put him in his place. Of course, the series in question is The Tick, which was adapted from a comic book run that was adapted into both an animated series and a live-action show before Prime Video put their spin on it.
The Tick Is As Good As The Boys, But Nowhere Near As Well-Known
The Tick began life as a comic book that was made to promote a small comic book store in Boston, but the popularity of the character, who was first created in 1986 by Ben Edlund, ended up being highly successful in its own right. Rather than stick to the usual tropes seen in comics from major publishers like Marvel or DC, The Tick was a very different beast.
The Tick is quirky, bizarre, absurd, and grounded in reality, with the addition of a wildly powerful superhero. Already, this creates a parallel with the world of The Boys, where the stories are grounded in realism, and ultimately end up becoming much darker because it highlights what flawed and imperfect people are likely to do if they gained powers.
While much of the story is grounded in The Tick, there is an exception in the form of the central hero, who seems to be spectacularly good, while also being kind of a ditz. This lays the foundation for a truly fascinating and fun superhero story, and with the performance of Peter Serafinowicz as the leading man in the blue suit, it’s a wonderfully bright and witty show that leans into absurdity to create something special.
On the other hand, The Boys offers audiences a very different experience with a more introspective approach and significantly more employment of graphic violence, grotesque lewd acts, and just a general sense of gritty, nasty, mess that encapsulates the series.
The Tick Paved The Way For The Boys’ Success
The thing is, The Tick was likely a big part of laying the ground for a show like The Boys to even be picked up. While the MCU was flying high, and the DCEU was making a real effort to create a superhero comic book universe of movies, there wasn’t a whole lot of nuance in the genre.
But The Tick broke up the monotony of what was being released in the genre, and it proved that absurdist, comical, and alternative superhero stories could work. Unfortunately, the show didn’t get a big reception when it began airing, and a decade after the series debuted, The Tick has yet to get the reception it truly deserved for being a stand-out, innovative approach to a type of storytelling that was deathly afraid of innovation or shaking up the status quo.
The Boys directly benefited from this new landscape, and with a little more polish and a pedigree behind it, the show ended up getting a much bigger push upon its release that ultimately led to the show getting five seasons and a handful of spin-offs to further explore the story.
Despite this, if you find yourself enjoying The Boys, or if you are just tired of seeing the same superhero story played out again and again, The Tick provides something completely fresh, new, and thrilling. With a near-indestructible hero with a major weakness (his antenna), and the ability to get stronger as the situation gets more dire, The Tick is a series that must be watched to truly be understood and appreciated.
- Release Date
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2016 – 2019-00-00
- Network
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Prime Video
- Showrunner
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Ben Edlund
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Geoffrey Cantor
Agent Adams
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Peter Serafinowicz
The Tick
