Who is this 300 pound blue bug? © Fox Children's Network.

"When I was 17, I didn't have a driver's license. Laziness or complacency I assume. So in order to get anything done, I had to go where everyone else was going before they would drop me off. And so, I was constantly going to the comic book store with friends who had licenses," explains Ben Edlund on how he developed a love for comics. Hence, the early beginnings of a lucrative career as writer and creator of The Tick comic book, television show, and possible feature down the road. The 28-year-old Massachusetts native now lives in Manhattan's hip Lower East Side, and recently met with me at a favorite haunt to talk about his rise to "limited, useless fame" over a bowl of tortilla soup and a Rolling Rock.

"There was a point where I was working on my own comic, which was a kind of pedantic sort of boy superhero, retro kind of comic. I was about 17 years old," recalls Edlund. One of the side characters of this comic was The Tick, a 300 pound, seven-foot-tall, blue tick. Edlund was given the chance to develop this naive and "nigh-invulnerable" protagonist when New England Comics (NEC), a retail comic book store based in Boston, asked him to do some gag drawings for an upcoming issue. A last minute change in their production schedule however, paved the way for a full comic issue dedicated to Edlund's character. For the next year and a half, Edlund worked on The Tick #1, developing his "big, dumb do-gooder," whose battle cry is "SPPOOONNN!!," while studying film at the Massachusetts College of Art.

An issue of The Tickcomic book. © New England Comics Press

The Coming of the Tick
The Tick comic book was an instant hit, and it acquired a large and loyal following, despite the fact that only a few original stories were published. "I strung The Tick fans along with a minimum amount of material - twelve issues in five years," says Edlund. He attributes the comic books' success to the attention given to the particulars. "They are very detail intensive, so there are a lot of connected storylines. It was also densely written as far as comedic ideas are concerned, so each issue that came out provided a reasonably enjoyable experience for the reader."

Kris Boose, owner of a comic book store in State College, PA, can't keep the trade paperbacks on the shelf. "It astounds me that The Tick has steam rolled so long on the strength of its characters and sharp-witted humor," says Boose. "He [Edlund] has created a unique and very entertaining parody of today's superheros."

While still in college, Edlund was approached by Kiscom, a New Jersey-based toy licensing and design company. Kiscom had noticed the popularity of The Tick, and hoped to create a merchandising phenomenon like the one launched by Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles a year earlier. Despite this interest, and talks with studios and television networks, none of the big players were initially interested in the show. "At the time, I just went back to college. Every once in a while Kiscom would call me and I would go have a free lunch with some representative of some large company, and that would be it. Finally, we got connected with Sunbow, who decided they wanted to develop this thing and hand it off to Fox Children's Network," says Edlund.