It takes a bold man to introduce any form of pathos to The Tick, a character that two generations of comic readers automatically associate with the battle cry of “Spoon!” or perhaps with being trapped in a dinosaur’s wild moustache hair.
The concept of introducing any kind of sorrow to a character who has battled a man-eating cow and a dude with a chair for a face takes a lot of balls, because if you do it wrong, you’re running the risk of seriously fucking up a character that has worked for a quarter century on a very simple level: be a goofy, naive superhero parody who says silly shit while battling ridiculous villains with his fat, incompetent sidekick. Get your giggles, get out, and hope that some kind television suit forgets that underrated live action TV show so The Tick gets another chance on television somewhere.
The Tick #101 opens with Arthur having been killed. The issue deals, in large part, with how The Tick deals with that loss. And we get emotional internal monologue of how the loss affects The Tick, including how, without Arthur or someone to help guide him, he is simply muscle pointed in no particular direction. These are issues and character points that could go wrong on a light-hearted character like The Tick in a real fucking hurry; watching The Tick contemplate mortality and is own shortcomings could very quickly go the way of watching Honey Boo Boo try to redefine Pi while her mother’s held at gunpoint: morbidly entertaining, but out of place and uncomfortable if done incorrectly.
Well, not to worry, because writer Benito Cerino strikes one hell of a balance between addressing the relationship between The Tick and Arthur, while still commenting on the innate ephemeral nature of any superhero’s death in comics these days, and chucking in plenty of jokes about mimes. Douchebag, douchebag mimes. And he uses the guest appearance of Mike Allred’s Madman as a catalyst to get into the more emotional, touching elements of the story, while never forgetting that this is a Tick story, which means that we get plenty of bombastic catchphrases and liberal use of words like “dink.”
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