CAPTAIN LIBERTY

NEWS
Sadly, The Tick's new series has been cancelled. The show averaged about 4.4 million viewers overall. Fans are attempting to save the show via letter writing campaigns.

How many episodes did they make?
There were officially 9 episodes made, only 8 of which were actually aired. The episode that did not air was "The Terror" based on the classic character from the comic and animated series.

When did the series air?
The series debuted on November 8, 2001 and ran sporadically through January 24, 2001. In all there were 8 first-run episodes and 1 repeat.

What was the highest rated episode?
The episode entitled "Couples" with an estimated 7 million viewers according to Reuters News Service.

What was the lowest rated episode?
The lowest rated episode to air was a repeat of "Couples" with an estimated 3.3 million.
The lowest rated first-run episode was "Arthur Needs Space" with an estimated 3.75 million.


Why were characters from the animated series renamed?
This production was through Columbia Tri Star TV which was a subdivision of Sony Entertainment. At the start of production on this series, Fox Children's Network and Saban Entertainment owned the rights to the animated show and the characters that were created specifically for the series. These companies could not reach an agreement on what part of the procedes from a new series that each company would be entitled to receive, nor could they agree on anything else for that matter. Because no agreement could be reached, the new production was forced to create new characters in place of those that they wanted to keep from the animated show. Thusly, they have avoided any legal entanglements and they should owe no money to the owners of the animated series.
It is actually more complicated than this, but this was the simplest way to explain the situation.

It should be clearly noted that the characters were not simply renamed. New characters were invented to replace the old ones.

What about the rights to Tick and Arthur?
Those rights are held by their creator, Ben Edlund. Also owned by Ben are characters created in the original comic books and possibly characters from the other comic books.

What are the new characters called and what are the like?
The two new main characters are named Captain Liberty and Batmanuel. Captain Liberty is an official representative of the US government and the living embodiment of the American way. Batmanuel is kind of a Latino Bat Man. Both do resemble the animated series characters American Maid and Die Fledermaus but they both are fully fleshed out characters themselves, with their own unique quirks, talents, POV's, etc.

Why is The Tick's costume open-faced?
Because when they tried to put a mask over Patrick's face, the Tick always had the exact same expression on his face (some say he always looked surprised.) They toyed with the idea of making a CGI overlay effect to recreate the look of the animated character but it didn't workout. I even heard that at one point they even considered a mask that was remote controlled like his antennae, but that was deemed to be torture for Patrick so the mask was dropped.