The Tick: Free Comic Book Day 2014

With Free Comic Book Day coming this weekend, here's a book I bought during 2014's FCBD at New England Comics in Quincy MA, where I got it signed by the writer and artists.

Title: The Tick: Free Comic Book Day 2014
Publisher: New England Comics
Date: 2014
Writer: Jeff McClelland
Artist: Duane Redhead, Ian Chase Nichols
Editor: George Suarez, Bob Polio

Arthur and the Tick have to solve the mystery of the disappearance of their entire city. Fortunately, an alien that they find standing by the edge of the massive hole in the ground is able to provide a clue, which leads them to a showdown with a deranged alien collector known as the Hoarder.

This was an amusing and fast-paced story with some good visual gags and some nods to silver-age city-in-a-bottle tropes.

The backup story was also amusing, with the Tick taking on a new bearded identity as the Lone Santa. It was mostly setup for one visual joke, but the payoff was pretty amusing.

Good, silly fun all round.

Rating: 7.5/10

The Chroma-Tick Special #1

From the random stack of unread comics.

Title: The Chroma-Tick Special
Issue: 1
Publisher: New England Comics
Date: 1992
Writer: Ben Edlund
Artist: Ben Edlund
Colorist: Bob Polio
Letterer: Bob Polio
Editor: George Suarez, Larry Boyd

This is the very first full-color comic featuring New England Comics' The Tick. The Tick battles ninjas, meets up with some mysterious strangers at a late-night diner, and even has an encounter with a familiar-looking mild-mannered reporter.

This was fun. Lots of good jokes, some clever references, and plenty of unexpected twists and turns. The Superman parody was particularly nicely done.

Bonus features include a set of trading cards, with a prose story in four chapters split between the cards, and an amusing interview with writer/artist Ben Edlund with some insights into the b/w comics boom of the 1980s, the origin-story of The Tick comic book, plus a bit of discussion about Pez.

This was particularly fun for me, as I was getting into collecting comics in the time period when The Tick was first being published, and I was also a regular at the New England Comics stores during that era.

Rating: 7.5/10