The Tick: The Naked City - with Case Aiken
This week on Trade School, Case Aiken dives into The Tick: The Naked City, the collection that first showed him just how weird, smart, and funny The Tick could be on the comics page. Ben Edlund’s original series is not just a superhero parody; it is a gleeful dismantling of capes, secret identities, ninjas, publicity-hungry heroes, and the entire idea of what a superhero world is supposed to look like. Listen to the episode, then go read the book. Spoon!
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Edited by Case Aiken
Scored by Bret Eagleston
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⏱️ Chapters
00:00 Welcome and Introduction
00:23 Why The Tick Matters
00:42 Discovering the Comic After the Cartoon
01:25 Breaking Down the Collection
02:15 A Night of a Million Zillion Ninjas
02:37 Villains Inc.
02:57 Why the Comedy Works
03:36 Early Tick Character Designs
04:18 The Superman Parody
04:48 The Ninja Story Picks Up
05:04 What Makes the Tick Work
05:42 The Villains Inc. Arc
06:26 Ben Edlund and the Tick’s Legacy
07:08 Final Recommendation
07:27 Case’s Plugs
08:31 Where to Find Case
09:13 The Word from Tomorrow Promo
Transcription
00:00
Welcome to Certain Point of View's Trade School, where each episode a different host talks about a comic book trade paperback that they loved and why they love it. Hey, everyone, I'm case aiken, and I am back on Trade School. Shocker. To talk about a comic book that really means something to me. That's because this is a series about collecting the stories about why comics mean something to people. And so I wanted to take this opportunity to talk about a book that meant a lot to me, but is a little different than often the fair that I get to talk about. I wanted to talk about the Tick, the Naked City. So this was my introduction to the comic book version of the Tick. I was previously familiar with the Tick cartoon show that ran on FOX when I was a kid.
00:42
I was a child of the 80s 90s, after all. And that was a wonderful introduction to the character into the broader world. However, I was not prepared for the nature of the satire that we would get in the actual comic itself. You see, the Tick is a parody of superhero conventions. And the Naked City, which is a color collection of the first six issues of the Tick comic book, which I believe were all originally published in black and white, does a wonderful job of dissecting the concept of a world of superheroes that doesn't really have super villains. Like, there are villainous characters, there are things for them to deal with. But a lot of the problems of the world of the Tick is that we are witness to a character who is.
01:25
We should start off clinically insane, but witness to a character who wants to be a superhero and doesn't really get super villains to fight. That's the starting point when discuss. So the. The book is broken up into three segments. The first two issues is the introduction of the Tick and deals with him trying to acclimate himself to the city, the generic city that he breaks out of a mental asylum to go and be a superhero around. And while he's there, he clashes with a Superman analog. Then the middle chunk is the three issue arc, A Knight of a Million Gazillion Ninjas, which is a Frank Miller parody. It's it. The Tick meets the character Oedipus, who is clearly based on Elektra. And if you know the concept of the Electra complex versus the Oedipal complex, that all makes sense right there. Oedipus is. Yeah.
02:15
Anyway, so she's a fun Deuteragonist and we. We get to meet more characters in the Tick universe. This is where his psychic Arthur comes into play. This is where Paul the samurai comes into play and we get actually the chance for the Tick to fight a whole bunch of ninjas. And that's really cool because a lot of comics were about ninjas, especially Frank Miller comic books at this point. And then we get the last chapter, the Villains Inc. Story arc, where we get to see what's going on with some of the super villains of the world, which is that they are mostly publicity stunts that are paid for by superheroes who want to get their name out there as a superhero. So the book is let's start off fun. It's a comedy like that. That's the first point here.
02:57
And I'm not going to go into all of the jokes and so forth of the story because that's, I think, kind of defeats the purpose of these. Like, you should go and experience it yourself. There's plenty of ways to read the Ticks early adventures. They've a lot over the years. This is a particularly good volume that has, like I said, color reproductions of everything, whereas there are many black and white reprints of the original books. But this is a. A good collection if you are just kind of interested in the Tick. It shows off a lot of what's going on with the world. Although it does have that sort of early comic strip kind of vibe where it's still finding its footing in terms of some of the art and some of the. The models for the character designs and so forth.
03:36
Arthur, for example, who is always supposed to be a little chubby, looks just particularly more so than the design that we would get, especially by the time we get to like the cartoon show. Actually, this makes me think a lot of. If you are familiar with like Garfield, the early Garfield strips versus by the time Garfield became a cartoon character, everything had become extremely standardized. So this is again much raw than what we would get with later interpretations of the character. That said, it's. It's a fun romp from the inner monologue that we have with the Tick as he opens discussing how Bored is and how he wants to be a hero in part just to sort of alleviate that boredom, which again, he's in an insane asylum at the start of the story and breaks his way out.
04:18
We follow him just being insufferable with their Superman analog character that is clearly modeled after the Christopher Reeve movies, right down to having a crystal that is used to create a fortress they accidentally turn on inside of a building. And we get a Jor El thing that they say is Marlon Brando. Again, it's very leaning into the Christopher Reeve Superman character, and also has the fun of leaning into the hypnotic glasses element of it. And I know I said I wasn't going to, like, spoil every joke. I'm just making passing references to some of these. Then once we get into the Night of the Million Zillion Ninjas, that is where it really picks up in terms of the severity of the story. And we get a credible threat. Now they're a credible threat to the majority of the world, not to the Tick.
05:04
The Tick is bemused more so by ninjas than he is actually worried about them. They are set up early in the first issue, and at no point is the Tick ever particularly worried that they could hurt him. Because the Tick's powers, and if you're not familiar with the character, is that he's nigh invulnerable and super strong. He's basically the Golden Age Superman. He can jump really far, he's really tough, and he's strong. And so a bunch of ninjas aren't going to do much to him now. They can do stuff to his friends. And that's why it's important that he has this. This character of Oedipus to travel with, because she is vulnerable to. To ninjas. She can be hurt by the various weapons that they have and so forth.
05:42
And there is this larger plot in terms of trying to destroy ninjas as a base concept that is explored throughout. And, you know, we get an appropriate level villain and all this, and then we get again the villains Inc. Arc at the very end where the Tick kind of clashes with other heroes who are trying to stage, you know, for publicity, like, villain encounters. And it's a fun story in general. Like, you know, I don't want to blow all the central gimmicks, but we see the character go through a bunch of antics and is not like, he's a goofy character. He's not the straight man in this world. The Tick is insane. The Tick is jovial and bubbly and kind of stupid. Kind of wonderfully stupid, frankly.
06:26
And so he is an excellent viewpoint character for the comedy that the series is trying to present. So that's the Tick. The Naked City again. It's by Ben Edlund, who has been the creator of the Tick. And while I understand that he's not doing the majority of Tick comics these days, he is a really cool creator who fashioned this awesome, like, character concept that has been adapted many times. Again, there's the cartoon show from the 90s that I'm extremely fond of. There was The Patrick Warburton live action show and more recently there was the Amazon show. That all have strong suits to them, even if I have a preference to the animated one. I think that every adaptation has been an enjoyable romp because it knows what it's trying to be. It's trying to be a parody of superhero material.
07:08
So that is the Tick the Naked City. I highly recommend it. If you can't pick up this particular volume, just check out the series. It's good. And you can probably find a collection or a digital version of the first six issues pretty easily. They're very available. And so that's that. That's the series and. And the. The arc that I wanted to talk about. And with that you should probably check out some of the other stuff that I do. So in addition to being the producer of this series, I am also the host of the Men of Steel and another past podcasts, which are two wonderful podcasts. One is a Superman show, one is a movie show. I also was the host of the Word from Tom alongside my friend Keith Lettinen, who is a regular contributor here.
07:48
That was an awesome retrospective on the series Transmetropolitan. So go check out those. Those are all available on their respective RSS feeds or on the certain POV media YouTube page. That page is also a place where I post other just random videos that I happen to be working on because it's a good consolidated place for me to put up material that I've been working on. Otherwise, that's. That's the big stuff. And so I just appreciate you. You should check out our Discord. Our the Discord server for certain POV media. You can link in the show notes or all over our website. It's a really fun time. Come, come hang out. We, you know, have all kinds of conversations going on. There's a ton of great shows in the network. So I do want to. To say, you know, check. Check out all those. Yeah.
08:31
And on social medias you can find me, I say at most social media sites. But like frankly, I've kind of ratcheted back in general. I. You can find me at case aiken at most social medias. The exception is Instagram where I'm holding on 4 dear life to my gmail screen name from high school. But frankly, Instagram is probably the place where I'm most these days. I'm currently doing a weight loss challenge called From Fat to Matt because I have a resemblance to Matt Damon. And so I am trying to go from Fat Damon to Matt Damon right now. And I'm trying to track that all. So you can find that on Instagram. Yeah, like Discord's probably the best place to find me. And check out the next episode of this show. And until then, happy reading.
09:13
The world is getting stranger every day, and somehow Trans Metropolitan saw nearly all of it. Coming from weaponized misinform theater to tech that reshapes our lives faster than we can process, the series future feels uncomfortably familiar. The Word From Tomorrow is a new read along podcast digging into that uncanny prescience. Hosted by case aiken and Keith Letinen, each episode welcomes a guest to explore how Warren Ellis and Derek Robertson's dystopian satire mirrors the world we're living in now. Across 10 episodes, we walk through the entire series, its politics, its media chaos, its dark humor, and the way it continues to hit with startling clarity. Listen@ certainpov.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Certainpov.com.