The Tick Vs. Season 2

Evil-doers, check your rear-view mirror because justice is closer than it appears! Everyone's favorite big blue hero, along with his trusty moth sidekick Arthur, is back for more hilarious adventures in THE TICK VS. SEASON TWO. With a heart as big as the moon and as warm as bathwater, The Tick flexes the muscle of goodness to keep the citizens of The City safe from the strangest collection of villains yet. Season Two brings the return of -ber-villains El Seed and Brainchild, our heroes make their reality TV debuts and The Tick whittles himself a new sidekick when a woman comes between him and his old chum Arthur. With a cornucopia of laughs and thrills stuffed onto three shiny discs, THE TICK VS. SEASON TWO delivers a one-two punch of goodness straight to your home entertainment center. The second season of the enormously entertaining and offbeat animated series The Tick arrives on DVD in an attractive package (with cover art by the character's creator, Ben Edlund) but little else, which should give pause to some of the program's dedicated fans. The Tick's surreal adventures got even stranger by the series' second season – among his opponents this season are the giant whale Blowhole, who makes trouble for The Tick and his temporary sidekick, Little Wooden Boy ("Little Wooden Boy and the Belly of Love"), portly villainess Venus, who removes The Tick's arms to commit a crime spree with them ("Armless But Not Harmless"), and Multiple Santa, a petty criminal whose encounter with a electrified billboard allows him to transform into Kris Kringle clones ("The Tick Loves Santa!"). Long-running nemeses like Brainchild and El Seed make return appearances as well (in "Coach Fussell's Lament" and "Bloomsday," respectively), and the episodes themselves have held up well in the decade since their broadcast. But one of the season's funniest episodes, "Alone Together" (written by Christopher McCulloch of The Venture Bros.), is inexplicably missing from this two-disc set, and its absence, along with a lack of any supplemental features save for a collectible lithograph, is bound to have Tick followers scratching their head over why their favorite blue tights-wearing crime fighter is getting such a raw deal. Could this be the work of Chairface Chippendale? -- Paul Gaita