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Before the Tick became a popular Saturday morning cartoon character, he was a popular Independent comic book character created by Ben Edlund. Here we get to basque in the glory of this wacky superhero parody through its initial run by its creator.

The Complete Edlund collects The Tick Issues 1-12, Pseudo Tick #13, and a bunch of bonus Edlund material.

Edlund began working on the tick when he was when he was high school with a cartoon and character profile in New England Comics news letter #14. The character profile is interesting for many reasons. First, it's reprinted with a big typo. Second, it establishes the Tick as a divorced French-speaking concert pianist while claiming to be clueless as to the characters' nationality.

Tick #1 features the Tick's escape from the city and the famous scene where the Tick is interrogated about whether he sucked blood. This was an okay issue overall, but it should be noted that it contained a lot of swearing, mostly milder stuff but a lot of it, and there was a barnyard expletive thrown in. Edlund cuts this way down in future issues, as he matured as a writer.

Issue 2 was an okay Superman parody that was just a little too obvious.

To me, Issue 3 is where the Tick truly hits hits his stride with a 3-part Ninja-fighting story parodying Frank Miller's Daredevil as he battles a ton of Ninjas to help out a woman named Oedipus who became a ninja due to her being and responding to an ad to the newspaper for ninja training. The Ninjas and the Tick all work hilariously. The Tick Universe expands with the introduction of Paul the Samurai and more importantly, Arthur.

In Issue 6, Edlund introduces the concept of Supervillains Incorporated which finds the world so full of superheroes that in order for a superhero to establish himself he has to hire a villain to fight. Hilarity ensues when the Tick meets up with the villain instead.

In Issue 7, Tick goes out to get some Pez but ends up fighting alongside a Dick Tracy-like crimefighter against the arch-criminal Chairface Chipendale in a plot that would be mostly borrowed for the cartoon series.

In Issue 8, Chairface's men are out for vengeance but are stopped by the man-eating cow as Tick and Arthur decide to go to New York to make it big as superheroes.

Issues 9 and 10 finds the Tick and Arthur on the road to New York and run into chainsaw vigilante and and a band of mad scientist hillbillies under an evil spell.

Issue 11 has the Tick arriving in New York and having to defend his Tickhood against a man named Barry who has been using the name the Tick. The two duel in the Comet Club while Author experiences the horror of a visit to the sidekick's lounge.

In Issue 12, the Tick has secured the rights to the name and gets a lot of cool stuff with it, but Barry is plotting revenge. This issue was the last that Edlund drew and it did seem to be getting a little weirder and the humor a little tired. This comic was in 1993, 9 months after the previous issue and was left unresolved.

This book allows Marc Silva to resolve the story line in Pseudo Tick #13 which merited a couple laughs and managed to close up the story line with Edlund and make it consistent with other books that had been produced since. The concept art and extras were unusual like an obscure art film.

The new edition (not by Edlund) extends a detail from Issue 1 in an amusing story.

The meat and the best part of the book are Issues 3-11 and mere synopsis doesn't do the book justice. There are some magic moments such as when the Tick coins the battle cry, "Spoon" or discovers he has pockets. It gets a little weird and sometimes too weird for my taste, but when it's not too weird, it's hilarious.