Cover Story - Top 12 Tick Covers

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While The Tick may not be on everyone’s mind this week he’s certainly on my mind.  His new live action show premiered Friday on Amazon mostly to widespread apathy but it’s reignited my curiosity for the character.  Like him or not, the wild blue yonder is one of the most successful indie superheroes there is, emerging out of the bubbling stew of creativity that was 1980s underground comics to be a major media force in the 1990s. 

In his over 20 year career the Tick has been adapted to live action, animation, video games, and a whole avalanche of comics, to the point that I’d say he deserves to be counted alongside the likes of Hellboy, Spawn, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as one of the truly iconic superheroes not to come from DC or Marvel.  Given all that, and the fact I’ve now got an excuse to re-examine some of his stuff, let’s dive into the shallow end and get the cover story on the top 12 covers featuring The Tick. 

Static Thoughts - The Tick (2001)

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Edited by Robert Beach

As the superhero genre continues to extend its icy tendrils into all forms of media, streaming superhero content seems to be the next big frontier for the genre. After such major hits as Daredevil and Jessica Jones, we’re now starting to see more obscure heroes get their shot at the big time such as last year’s Powers and 2016’s The Tick reboot on Amazon. As evidenced by the name of this article, The Tick reboot is what brought me here today, though I don’t have any plans to review it yet. I’ll give my thoughts eventually. For now, it’s just a pilot, and I’d like to wait till we see a full series before making a definitive call. 

No, I’m here today to look backward rather than forward, back to the strange days of 2001. Those were the days before Nolan’s Batman, before the Marvel cinematic universe, even before Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man. Back then, Batman and Robin had just recently killed the superhero genre while Blade and X-Men had only recently revived while the boom of indie comics led to dozens of off-beat hero adaptations. 

This was the era of Spawn, Savage Dragon, the Maxx, Wild C.A.T.s, Witchblade, Freakazoid, and more. This was also the time superheroes came to live-action TV like never before with shows like Mutant X and Smallville. In the midst of these two major trends, an obscure Boston indie superhero found his way into a live-action adaptation that, while brief, I’d argue as one of the best installments of the genre. His name? The Tick. 

Static Thoughts - Street Sharks

Edited by Robert Beach

I’ve been playing something of a game of catch-up with geek news lately after being pretty busy with other projects, so I know I’m quite late to the party on this particular news story: the Street Sharks. In case you’ve been as unconnected as me lately, the Street Sharks were recently at the crux of an Internet news story when some plucky cub reporter altered their Wikipedia page to suggest there was a female Street Shark to fill out the roster. 

The ‘twist’ of our story was how the entire Internet was taken in by this ruse and immediately misremembered the show as having a female member of the team, and we all shared a good belly laugh at the fallibility of the human mind (it’s a dark joke.) 

Putting aside the “haha, your mind can betray you at any minute” comedy/commentary of the gag, I think the whole thing brings up a pretty interesting subject that’s been on my mind for a couple of years now, which is the incredibly bizarre relationship nerds all seem to share with The Street Sharks. Rather than pointing and laughing at people remembering the show inaccurately, my question is this: why do we remember the Street Sharks at all? 

Cover Story - Top 15 Ninja Turtle Covers

So, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have returned to the box office 2 years after their universally panned reboot film.  While Out of the Shadows seems to have fixed some of the previous film’s problems audience interest seems lapsed at best, mainly owing to the first films complete lack of quality and the much more popular Nickelodeon show only picking up steam in the interim. 

However, I’m not here to discuss the failings of the new TMNT movie as I didn’t bother to go see it, fixed income and all that.  Instead, let us actually celebrate the Ninja Turtles the only way a comic book nerd like me can: with an arbitrary assortment of covers arranged into a ranking format so as to give the illusion of meaning and import to my personal preferences.  With that said, let’s dive into the shallow end and get the cover story on the top 15 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles covers.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 Trailer

The 2014 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turltes movie was awful, let’s get those cards on the table right here at the start.  I did a full review of the film at the time but I get the sense in the time sense it came out there’s been a tendency by most to mellow on its awfulness.  More and more the defense I hear from people is “it’s for kids and it’s not that bad aside from the changes,” to which I say: no, it is exactly that bad.  I’m not even really a fan of the Ninja Turtles so much as a thoroughly concerned observer and even I know the movie is terrible, mainly because it insults you with every chance it gets. 

Seriously, the writing in the film is so incredibly broken and incompetent that the finale is hinged on a call-back to something that was never established in the first place.  The movie is essentially a first draft that received no polish under the assumption people wouldn’t care.  However, it made a whole lot of money at the box office so now we’re getting a sequel just a scant 2 years after the original, pretty much the same approach as the Amazing Spider-Man franchise that the new TMNT draws so heavily from.  Now we’ve got the first trailer for that new film entitled Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows and surprise; it doesn’t look that bad.

7 Cartoons that Deserve Live-Action Adaptations

Check out my latest Laser Time listicle about the animated shows that deserve to live action adaptations:

http://www.lasertimepodcast.com/2015/10/21/7-cartoons-that-deserve-live-action-adaptations/

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #50 Review

It's issue #50 for IDW's excellent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic and I give it the full review over on Front Towards Gamer, check it out here:

http://ftg.operationsupplydrop.org/2015/10/13/teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-50-review-comics/

Jem & The Holograms #5 Review

Jem & The Holograms does it AGAIN this week with another amazing installment, check out my review on All-Comic, it's seriously worth your time

http://all-comic.com/2015/jem-holograms-5/

Static Thoughts - 15 Non-Comic Star Trek Crossovers

If you like this review feel free to 'like' Lido Shuffle on Facebook here or follow me on Twitter here.

Earlier this week I posted a list of comic book properties I thought Star Trek should crossover with next.  While making that list I started thinking about other things Trek should crossover with, a not uncommon occurrence given my status as an avid Trek-cionado.  So I came up with another 15 non-comic book properties that Star Trek should crossover with next now that it’s already crossed into Planet of the Apes, Doctor Who, Ghostbusters, G.I. Joe, and Transformers.  Let us list them.  

7 Big Franchises That Got Weird Albums

Hey I got a list published on the popular podcasting website Laser Time.  Check it out here http://www.lasertimepodcast.com/2015/06/23/7-big-franchises-that-got-weird-albums/