The Tick: Color Series 1 by Gabe Crate

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


The Tick was originally published as an exclusively black and white publication. This book collects the first ten Color issues and I have mixed feelings on it.

Gabe Crate's, "The Tick's Incredible Internet Comic #1" is a delight. It's classic Tick stuff as Arthur deals with a brother-in-law whose a supervillain while the Tick goes on patrol alone and then buys a gift from a supervillain in the back-up story.

However, Mark Silva's run on, "The Tick Color #1-6" are probably the least fun material I've read. I've thought about the reason for some time and I've come up with this. Silva focuses the bulk of the story on the Tick's superhero team. The problem with that is that unlike the Tick and Arthur, the superhero team is a collection of one-note jokes (one of them's a drunk, one of them's crazy, one is as as fast as ten very fast men, etc.) and it can be okay to have them feature in an issue when they dominate an entire series, it just really sucks the life out of it. It's not all bad, but it's again very weak.

"The Tick's Big Halloween Special #1 2001" by Clay and Susan Griffith's is a little too weird for my tastes but okay.

"The Tick's Big Red and Green Christmas Spectacle #1 2001" by the Griffiths is really the best story in the book as the Tick teams up with a retired movie cowboy to save Christmas from an evil tycoon who bought all the presents. It's a hilarious tale that saved this book from being two stars.

"Introducing the Tick #1" by Silva is a somewhat trying comic book and is it presents a very dry retelling of all the Tick stories that have happened until now. As I've read all the stories referenced, it's somewhat depressing to read this and the attempts at humor as the originals were so much more lively and interesting.

So, overall, I'm not terribly impressed with the Tick and Color, but it has less to do with the color and more with Mark Silva's writing.



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