The Tick: First Clips Released

15 years after Fox's live-action series was cancelled, lasting only 9 episodes, Amazon is set to unveil their upcoming reboot of The Tick. To drum up some interest, Amazon has released (via EW) the first pair of sneak peeks from the pilot, which debuts this Friday.

In the first clip, The Tick takes on a bunch of gun-toting goons at a shipyard, laughing off each bullet that bounces off of him, and in the following clip, The Tick is excited to make a reluctant Arthur his new sidekick and even presents him with a superhero costume.

Since the world of superheroes has become grittier over the past 15 years, The Tick will reflect that change. "It's a tremendous balancing act because it had to have stakes, it had to have blood, it had to have certain things that are part of the living language of superheroes in the popular culture today," Ben Edlund, the creator of The Tick, told EW. "It has a responsibility if it wants to play in that pool to have life and death, to have a relationship to violence that none of the other iterations did. And so how do you have The Tick slip in a pool of blood and have it be funny? You have to find a very specific tone."

In a world where superheroes have been real for decades, an underdog accountant with zero powers comes to realize his city is owned by a global super villain long-thought dead. As he struggles to uncover this conspiracy, he falls in league with a strange blue superhero.

The Tick stars Peter Serafinowicz (Guardians of the Galaxy), Griffin Newman (Vinyl), Jackie Earle Haley (Watchmen), Valorie Curry (House of Lies), Yara Martinez (Jane the Virgin) and Brendan Hines (Scorpion). The Tick is executive produced by Ben Edlund (Supernatural), Barry Josephson (Bones) and Barry Sonnenfeld (A Series of Unfortunate Events), directed by Wally Pfister (The Dark Knight), and written by Edlund. The Tick is a co-production with Sony Pictures Television.

The Tick premieres on Amazon on Aug. 19.