THE CHROMA-TICK #1 New England Comics Press, 1992

I have raved about Ben Edlund's The Tick before, and since this is my blog and I can start posting nothing but pictures of cats if I want to, I am going to rave about Ben Edlund's The Tick again.

From its humble beginnings as a small press black and white book published by New England Comics Press, The Tick grew into a pop cultural juggernaut, with a really well done cartoon and a short-lived but kick-ass live series starring Patrick Warburton. Perhaps "pop cultural juggernaut" is overstating things a bit, but The Tick was enough of a hit to boost creator Ben Edlund's career; he worked on Joss Whedon's lamented, beloved TV series Firefly and wrote some of the funnier episodes of the series ("Jaynestown" and "Trash" I believe). In my book, Ben Edlund has built up some cred as Bringer of Goodness.

This particular issue, The Chroma-Tick Special Edition #1, is a colorized re-print of the first Tick issue. I'm not all that convinced that The Tick needed to be in color, but whatever.

I'm not going to give a detailed analysis of the story or artwork or offer an insightful exploration of the themes or socio-cultural context of this comic book, primarily because I never do that. I'm all about summarizing comics and throwing in a couple of cheap gags - but why do all that typing if the comic can do it for me?

Here's a sequence that made me laugh when I first bought this comic back in The Day and made me laugh last night when I was flipping through it. The Tick gets knocked out and wakes up someplace dark (a train tunnel):

A thinly disguised Clark Kent analog is on the subway platform and he notices somebody in the tunnel. There's no time to change into his super alter ego, so he runs down the tunnel to rescue The Tick, who is convinced he is inside a whale.

The Tick's brain works in strange ways. Once he has locked into a conclusion - I am in a whale - he has a hard time switching gears when presented with new information that might contradict his initial conclusion. Observe:

He struggles with the Clark Kent clone, with predictable results:

My standards are low, but I think that is funny. Thanks, Chroma-Tick #1, for making me laugh twice at the same joke - once in 1992, once in 2006. That is comic book value, right there.