20 funny comics to lighten your mood and make you laugh

3. The Tick

With not one, but three television versions of The Tick, it may be easy for casual viewers to miss the fact that the series began life as another comic book. In fact, for all that we’ve spoken of satirical superheroes, The Tick may be the first. He was created by cartoonist Ben Edlund in 1986, long before Warren Ellis and Stuart Immonen dreamed of Nextwave or Matt Fraction took over on Hawkeye. That’s some serious satirical cred.

Originally, The Tick was meant to be a mascot for the New England Comics chain of stores. More specifically, he was only meant to appear in the newsletter of a single chain in Norwood, Massachusetts. Eventually, however, Edlund’s creation became so popular that the store financed a print run of his series. The first issue, released in 1988, became even more popular.

The Tick is a bit of an oddball, even for the deeply strange world of superheroes. He has no memory of his life before he donned his bright blue costume. In fact, he’s dealt with so many head injuries that he can hardly remember what happened the day before. In the original comic series, he was revealed to be an escaped mental patient. Other versions keep his origins more mysterious, though at least one character has suggested that The Tick is actually from outer space.

Our main superhero is accompanied by a strange cast of sidekicks and secondary characters. These include the neurotic Arthur, the Tick’s sidekick who is crammed into a moth-themed uniform. There’s also American Maid, Batmanuel, Captain Liberty and Die Fledermaus, though not all turn up in the same series at the same time.

Edlund’s comic soon grew into different forms of media. FOX picked it up as an animated series in 1994, which ran until 1997. Patrick Warburton starred at the title character in the first live-action version, from 2001-2002. Peter Serafinowicz took over in the second live-action series, airing on Amazon starting in 2016.