25 Years of Arachnid Vigilance—A Chat with Bob Polio of NEC and The Tick

For the first time in all the many years New England Comics, publishers of that scion of mighty blue justice, The Tick, has had a booth at San Diego ComicCon, the publisher will have copies on hand of the very first appearance of this beloved icon of superheroness for the last two and a half decades.  Yes, the 14^th issue of the New England Comics Newsletter saw print rather inauspiciously, another newsletter for the chain of comics shops out on the eastern seaboard.  However, this issue contained a three-page story written and drawn by a young Ben Edlund about the insane idiot superhero which would spawn a legacy that continues to this day.

But bring your checkbook.  Even a low-graded copy of this rarity is priced at $600.  Mind you, these have been around since Marvel’s own 25^th anniversary, in 1986.

Wait, is my math wrong?

“It was actually two years before the first issue of The Tick was finished,” Tick art director Bob Polio says, “That’s where we count the anniversary from.  But it’s actually been twenty-five years and then some.”  He shrugs.

Polio has been a fixture at NEC and its booth and SDCC for many years now, and he continues to play a major role in The Tick franchise.  Polio designed the original logo for the book, the quite recognizable six-legged icon behind the title, which design was also used for the now classic Fox cartoon that aired on Saturday mornings beginning in 1994.  Polio also helped Edlund, who is fairly notorious for taking extra long to finish projects, get through the initial writing stages of that cartoon series.

“Ben calls me up one night, he says, ‘Bob, I have writer’s block.’  I said, ‘Ben, it’s the pilot episode.  Already you have writer’s block?’” Polio says and chuckles in his charming John-Candy-by-way-of-Boston style.  Polio calmed Edlund down and suggested that he have The Tick attempt to disarm a bomb by simply tearing chunks of it apart willy-nilly, until it becomes even more dangerous.  Polio says that most of his specific suggestions for that scene didn’t make it into the final project, but regardless, Polio often served as a guiding hand for Edlund’s vision.

In the original black-and-white stories, obviously, no one could tell what color The Tick was.  But one day Polio asked Edlund out of curiosity and Edlund replied that he’d be brown, naturally, like an actual tick.  Polio talked him out of that: “I said, Superman: blue.  Batman: blue.  Fantastic Four: blue.  Blue is a superhero color.”  Since Polio has colored pretty much every NEC comic since, I think it’s safe to say he made the right call on this.

If you’ll be at SDCC this Saturday, both Polio and Edlund will regale the crowds with stories not dissimilar to these at their panel for The Tick’s 25^th anniversary at 1 pm in Room 23ABC.