I feel a bit ranty today. Had a fairly good sized haul of stuff come in from online this week, necessitating a concentrated cleanup effort last night to rid myself of stray boxes- Nice quality KO versions of the GaoGaiGar truck brothers, Microman-style Mikoto Utsugi, and possibly most significantly, The Tick Vs. Season 2.
Tick Season 2 happens to have a good number of my favorite episodes, including “Little Wooden Boy and the Belly of Love,” a rather busy season premiere which I’d mentally divided up into probably two-three different episodes. I have to wonder about the missing episode du jour though- the first season didn’t suffer greatly with the loss of the Mole Men episode, as unnecessary as it was (Marvel allegedly had their tights in a bunch over a completely different race that just happened to be called Mole Men- watch out, Saul Malone!), but the omission of Alone Together kind of leaves a hole in the story- namely the gigantic bite taken out of the moon.
If there are any uninitiated out there- I assume that I can’t be the entire daily traffic for the site no matter how often I reload the page to see if miniscule changes took hold- the Tick is a series that never seems to pass up a chance for a running gag. The defacement of the Moon is the biggest one, as an early Season 1 episode features the villain Chairface Chippendale attempting to write his name on it with a giant laser, but he’s thwarted before he can get past “CHA.”
In the MIA episode, the Tick is sent up by NASA to plant some demolition charges to erase the lunar graffiti, but because this is The Tick, they screw up and he’s flung into deep space by the blast. He does succeed in erasing the C, leaving the moon with a cheery “HA” across it. While drifting aimlessly, he meets up with and befriends Omnipotus, the Devourer of Worlds (Galactus with a gut, and “freaky small” feet.) Though he’s dissuaded from eating the world after returning our hero to it, he’s feeling a bit peckish and takes a bite out of the moon for the road, leaving it kind of Pac-Man shaped, as it remains for the rest of the series.
I don’t know how necessary this little rant-splanation is. I guess anyone buying the DVD sets of a TV show would probably already be a fan and know better. There seem to be two suppositions about the removed episodes from season 1 and 2, however:
(From Wikipedia, which we all know is never wrong)
Buena Vista Home Entertainment released the first season of The Tick animated series on DVD on August 29, 2006. The release contains only 12 of the 13 First Season episodes. On May 31, 2006, Disney released the following statement regarding the missing episode: “Due to creative considerations, episode #11 (“The Tick vs. The Mole Men”) is not included. However, we hope to include it in future releases of The Tick.” [1] The UK edition of the first season, released the following year by Liberation Entertainment Ltd., presented all 13 episodes.
On May 4, 2007, Disney was reported to have announced the second season of The Tick animated series for DVD release on August 7, 2007. [2] This DVD release is not the complete second season, as it is missing the episode “Alone Together”, featuring Omnipitus, a parody of Galactus (though, earlier episodes used similar comic book parodies, and are available on the DVD releases). The UK edition of this second season is available for pre-order at many online retailers for a release on October 8, 2007 and the cover artwork and title both proclaim it to be “The Complete Season 2”.
It may be worth noting that both deleted episodes (as well as four from the third season) were written by Christopher McCulloch [Jackson Publick], creator of the Cartoon Network (and, by extension, Warner Bros.) series The Venture Bros.; there have, however, been no official claims as to whether this is the real reason behind the omissions.
End result is the same, I assume. Hopefully at some date they’ll be released with Season 3 or in a cop-out “Best of!” disc of some sort. We’ll probably know if it’s the writer issue if Season 3 is missing a whopping four episodes.
By the way, apparently “Used- Very Good condition” on Amazon means they took it around the back and worked it over. Disc runs fine, but the cardboard jacket and case were pretty crushed. Ah well! At least I can rest soundly knowing I didn’t pay full price for any of the swag.
HappyWell KO-style Choryujin and Gekiryujin sets- $2.50 all together! I can finally have a GGG shelf.