The Best Superhero Satire Is Perfect For A Return Thanks To Fatigue

Sure, we have The Boys for anyone that wants a cynical, nihilistic take on superheroes full of all the gore and four-letter words you can shake a prehensile penis at. But what about a series that makes light of all the absurdity inherent in superhero media while still maintaining a genuine reverence for the genre? A 2024 revival of The Tick is what the tired but loyal fans of Marvel and DC need.

I, like most people in their late 30s/early 40s, first discovered The Tick through the ’90s animated series, but the character existed for almost a decade before his TV debut. The Tick started life in the ’80s as a black-and-white independent comic book starring a nearly 7ft tall, nigh-invulnerable superhero named The Tick. Both The Tick cartoon and the indie comic it was based on parodied the Marvel and DC comics of the time, poking fun at characters like Superman and The Punisher with reckless abandon.

The cartoon was followed by two live-action revivals: The Tick (2001) and The Tick (2016). The first show was good but short-lived. The second one took a new approach to The Tick by making it all about the original characters and eliminating the parody element completely. Needless to say, it wasn’t very good.

The Tick cartoon remains the best iteration of the character to date. It took tired old comic tropes and twisted them through a surrealist lens, resulting in something that was equal parts Mad Magazine and Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

The Tick is a goofy, absurd take on superheroes, and it desperately needs to come back in some form. I want a new incarnation of The Tick that will poke fun at superhero movies the way the original poked fun at comic books. The possibilities for poking fun at the MCU alone are endless.

For example, the very controversial practice of gender and race-swapping popular heroes. Imagine the Tick’s faithful sidekick—an accountant in a moth suit who everyone thinks is a rabbit—is played by a different person every couple of episodes. He starts out as the typical dumpy, white nerd that he’s always been, only to be replaced in episode 3 with a black man. A few episodes after that Arthur is suddenly a woman.

The best part is the gag would never be explained.

Imagine poking fun at the Spider-Verse with an arc where all of these Tick’s from other realities suddenly converge in the prime Tick’s reality. The joke could be about each variant going beyond the usual types—the Indian version, the high-tech version, etc.—and being super specific. There’s the Tick that is allergic to peanuts. The Tick whose plants keep dying. The Tick, who’s really good at Pac-Man…and so on.

The Tick could have a new group of friends based on the Avengers. Maybe there’s a Thor analog who’s been hit by his own lightning one too many times and isn’t quite there mentally. There could be a Hawkeye stand-in who is constantly being made fun of for using a bow and arrow and whose trick arrows are dumb, like a glass of water arrow for someone who is dehydrated.

Look, I’m painfully aware that I’m not a television writer. The specific gags aren’t the point. The point is that there’s never been a better time to bring back The Tick.

Hollywood, I’m begging you, someone, anyone, revive the Tick to poke fun at the current state of superheroes. You won’t be sorry.