The Tick statue by Sideshow Collectibles

A few years ago I was at the Baltimore Comic-Con, and I took a walk to look at some of the vendor booths and happened upon a retailer who had a new Tick statue in a conspicuous location.  It was love at first sight, and I was pretty close to buying it right then and there.  I stopped myself, though, and decided to use it instead as a goal that I'd try to reach.  At this time I was considering submitting a short story to New England Comics, and I told myself that if I put the story together and actually got something published at the company, then I could buy the statue.  Truthfully, I've got more than a few Thing statues and I didn't want to just start collecting other high-end items without just cause.  It took a few years, but this Saturday, I got this statue in the mail and oh, what a beauty it is.

Rather than just keeping it to myself, though, I thought it'd be a good idea to take some pictures and share it with the Internets.

This statue is designed and produced by Sideshow Collectibles, which seems to have a statue for every product line imaginable these days, and it's part of an extremely limited production run.  If I had known how few of these were made at the time, I might have just gone ahead and bought the statue in Baltimore, but eBay, as always, came through for me and I was able to grab a brand new one from a shop in Florida.

According to the box, there were 255 statues made of the "regular" run, which is kind of an arbitrary number, it seems, and only 100 of the limited edition variety, which is what I was able to get.  So that means I own 1% of the entire production run of this statue.  Crazy.  I got number 47, by the way.

Here's what it looked like when I opened the packaging.  Some of the styrofoam flaked off, but that's okay, it just looks like the Tick is reveling in the snow.  You'll notice an object on the right side of the picture - what could it be?

It's what makes this statue a part of the limited edition run - the Tick's magic Crime Viewfinder!  It's tiny and resplendent in its glory.  I had thought that the viewfinder would be attached to the statue, but I'm glad that it comes as its own separate piece with a cloth strap.  It really adds something to the piece, I think.

Yes, I held it up to the light and tried to look through it; no, it's not functional.  Oh well.

A recent Bowen Thing statue that I got for my birthday last year was of a similar design - that is, the figure and the base come separately, with a peg in the figure's foot included to attach the two.  I love how this base incorporates the Tick logo into the statue.  The base is also quite apt - the Tick stands on a rooftop, overlooking The City below.

It took a while to get the peg into place, to the point that I thought that I might not be able to work it in. If I couldn't get it to fit, I was just going to take the damn thing to a convention and give it to someone working at the Sideshow booth and tell them "fix it!"  But luckily it didn't come to that, and the figure slid into place easily enough.

I love the perspective of the base.  I was hoping that, like many of my Thing statues, this would come with some sort of certificate, but it didn't.  If it had, I was going to take it to Comic-Con next year in hopes of getting Ben Edlund to sign it.  As it is, though, I'm considering taking the base with me for that purpose.  On the bottom of the base is the Tick logo with some production information (including the number), and I think it'd work really well to get it signed there.  That way it isn't obtrusive or distracting and on the character - it'll be there but not too noticeable.

Here's the statue with the viewfinder.  The statue stands about 12 inches tall, and it's a pretty weighty item.

Right after taking this picture, my cat, who is curious like you might expect a cat to be, slid off of the back of this makeshift base, dragging the sheet with her.  I caught the statue before it went over, thus saving me the pain of breaking my purchase less than an hour after I received it, as well as keeping me from my quest of then having to own 2% of the entire production run.  Thank goodness.

Here's the back of the statue, almost as good looking as the front.  This is a great addition to the collection and I'm pretty excited about seeing it when I wake up every morning.  Sideshow makes some high quality merchandise, and this did not fail to impress.  I'm glad that I finally managed to get this and put it up on display.