All the Ticks! (Plus...more Ticks)

There's some exciting new Tick content coming your way very soon, in the form of a Tick reunion featuring every television iteration! On Sunday, November 15th at 7pm EST, House Seats will stream the gathering in which each cast will read unproduced scripts. All three Ticks: Townsend Coleman, Patrick Warburton and Peter Serafinowicz, all four Arthurs: Micky Dolenz, Rob Paulsen, David Burke and Griffin Newman, and plenty of co-stars like Val Curry, Yara Martinez, Liz Vassey and Cam Clarke will be there! And to top it off, creator Ben Edlund will be there, leading the charge.

This is obviously a big deal, and it's the first time that all three casts will be together in the same virtual space. Best of all, the ticket proceeds for this event will benefit food banks across the country. If you haven't yet, you can get your tickets here: https://houseseats.live/2020/11/15/all-the-ticks/. And if you worry about missing the event because, say, the 8-0 Steelers are going to be playing at around the same time, don't worry, because the video will be available to view until November 22nd!

I'm really excited to see all of these fine folks again.

While we're here, let's look at a few new Tick items that I recently picked up!

The first is an original sketch by Chris Schwartz, who drew this classic Tick for his 2019 Inktober challenge. There's a lot of blue line that the scanner doesn't pick up, too. The artist certainly got the square jaw down.

Next up, here are two more props from the Amazon Tick series that I managed to grab recently. This one is The Terror's world domination speech from the end of season one!

And here's an annual report for the Terror's Brown Tingle Cola company. This is a folder that has a lot of actual, very official-looking graphs and charts inside. 

It looks like BTC's market share is increasing exponentially! I wonder what the secret ingredient is?

Here are the two branded certificates that came with the items!

That's it for now. Spoon!

Pictures from the 2018 New York Comic Con, part 4 (Sunday, 10/7)

It's time for the last batch of pictures from the 2018 New York Comic Con, on an overcast Sunday. I don't usually make it to NYCC on Sunday, but this year I had two fairly big reasons for being there, and it was fun to be there until the show closed down for the year. Let's take a look at the pictures!

Here's the Javits Center on a gloomy Sunday morning.

Is this...a Power Rangers thing? Either way, it's good work.

She-Ra had a big presence at the show, despite the new cartoon not having aired yet at the time. I'm happy to see how popular it's become since. What a great way to welcome young girls into nerd culture!

I was (apparently) very excited to see my friend Oliver Mertz on the show floor!

Okay, there's Rogue...and Gambit, yeah...and Captain Marvel...and...what is goin' on with that Captain America?!

Early in the day on Sunday, I met up with Jennie Wood and we walked over to the Dark Horse Comics booth. This was a big day! We got to go into the inner workings of the booth setup, into the meeting area, where we sat down for an interview with Comics Beat writer Edie Nugent! We talked about, among other things, the Flutter collection which was on the cusp of being released at this time.

I was only slightly nervous during the whole thing (and Jennie did most of the heavy lifting, naturally). But someone delivered snacks during the interview, which was right up my alley, of course.

After the interview, Jennie and I stepped out into the signing stage where we had a special signing to promote the Flutter Collection! Jennie is, of course, the one who set all this up, and I was happy to be along for the ride. It was a fun experience that I won't forget. And if you wonder how dedicated I am to things like this, just know that I missed the first half of the Steelers game for it, which is a big deal. Obviously, I still ran around in black and gold, like an annoying away team fan.

The signing wrapped up near the end of the show, and I ran around for a few minutes to get one last look at everything. Costumes were still plentiful here on the last day.

Does DC have the market on LEGO superhero movies? I'd think that a Spidey LEGO movie would do...pretty well.

Crowds started to thin as the day drew to a close. But I still had one last stop to make.

The 2018 Tick panel was a last minute addition to NYCC, for reasons that will be forever unknown to me. But right at the end of the day, room was found and the whole cast showed up.

New-to-season-two cast member John Hodgman was the emcee for the panel.

The room filled up pretty quickly as the panel began - I went to previous panel to make sure that I'd get a seat. Soon after I made it in, they closed the doors and wouldn't allow others to enter early, so in the few minutes leading up to the panel, the room was pretty sparsely populated, which was kind of worrisome. But then, all at once, the doors opened and everyone flooded in. The room was mostly full for the panel.

Since this was the last panel for the day - and the convention - it ran over quite a bit, to the point where workers were coming in and yelling at everyone to leave so they could tear down the stage.

The cast of The Tick seems to genuinely like each other, and the fact that they all showed up at the last minute for this thing was a nice testament to that. Season two is on Amazon Prime now!

As the panel was breaking up and the workers were shooing everyone out, I got to say hello to a few of the cast members. Here I am with Miss Lint, Yara Martinez!

I, uh, gave John Hodgman some pins. And then we took a picture.

And then I saw Valorie Curry! What a great character Dot is on this show. In between the two of us, you can see one of the workers literally pulling the stage apart.

Everyone on stage took the time to sign autographs, take pictures, and talk to the fans who stuck around until the very end of the convention. It seemed to me that everyone in the room was happy to be there, even at the end of a long convention and given a non-ideal time slot for the day. Here's hoping that the cast can be together for several more seasons.

And that's it for my NYCC 2018 trip. It was off to New York Penn Station and back home. But let's look at some of the things I picked up while I was there!

Earlier in the day, Ian Nichols took me to one of the booths selling original art, and I grabbed some color guides - specifically for the short-lived and much-maligned Fantastic Force series! When I saw a bunch of these all piled up, I knew what issue to look for: #7, one of the few that directly crossed over with the main Fantastic Four book. This page has the Thing in a couple panels, so it was a no brainer!

This is the Venture Bros. production art I got earlier at the panel.

The best thing I bought, though, was this Flying Spaghetti Monster colander, seen here full of pasta.

I'm out of convention pictures! Time to go to another convention, I guess. Until then...!

Watch Amazon's "The Tick" RIGHT NOW! (and vote and comment!)

This day has been a long time in coming, but I think you'll agree that it's been worth the wait. The Tick has returned to television in the form of Amazon's Pilot Season program. What's best is that you can now stream the very first episode for free (available here)!

I was able to first watch the pilot last night and I loved every second of it. I am, naturally, very biased, but I hope that you'll believe me and give it a shot. And as someone who occupies just a tiny part of the Tick's universe, I know for a fact that the people involved in this production gave it their heart and soul in bringing the concept back.

There are a lot of reasons to love this new series, but for me it's how resonant the characters are, even in just the first episode. Griffin Newman is the focus of the pilot and he plays an empathetic, nuanced Arthur that provides a perfect balanced to the bombastic, aloof Tick, played by Peter Serafinowicz. One of the great additions to this show is a new spotlight on Arthur's sister, Dot, played by Valorie Curry. I for one cannot wait to see how her character grows and eclipses the character's appearances in previous iterations.

If you take the time and watch the pilot, I hope that you'll also vote for the show and leave a comment with Amazon - you can do both from the amazon.com/pilotseason homepage. Amazon will be streaming this episode for the foreseeable future and will be taking fan feedback for just about a month - we should know sometime near the end of September if the show will get picked up for a full series. We need to make this happen! So please, if you like the show (or just The Tick in general), watch it, tell your friends about it, vote for it and comment on it!

The above picture is from this year's SDCC panel and was probably my favorite moment at the convention. I know that this series can be a force at Amazon for years to come. Please help make this happen!

OTHER TICK STUFF:

I have (of course) been searching the Internet for mentions of The Tick over the last few days, and I found a couple fun items. The first is an article about the original live action show from back in 2001.

The second is a really cool sketch cover drawn on the 2015 Comic-Con exclusive book. I'm glad that we finally printed some blank sketch covers for 2015 and '16 and it's neat when these pop up every once in a while. The person who owns this even got it graded and everything!

That's it. This was an obligatory post, but I mean it when I say that the show is worth your while. I hope you'll check it out.