Occasionally, we here at Gadling like to stretch the boundaries of what constitutes “travel” and do a silly little post that is dear to our hearts, but frankly, not really travel related.
Of course, we can put a nice little travel spin on pretty much anything we want if we try hard enough. Take for example the news I came across yesterday that my favorite cartoon, The Tick, is finally being released on DVD after being off the air for ten years in America.
The Tick, for those of you who don’t watch cartoons, is an irreverent superhero in a bright blue costume who fights crime along with his sidekick Arthur, a pudgy ex-accountant who wears a moth suit.
The Tick is a pseudo-philosopher who is a bit low on brainpower but more than makes up for it with a good, simple heart and plenty of dumb brawn. Between his rally cries of spoon!, the Tick has been known to delve into such diverse topics as evil, fish, the attributes of a moustache, alien probes, and Joseph Stalin.
So where’s the travel angle you ask? Well, in the third and final season, the Tick goes to Europe on a Superhero Exchange Program. He switches places with Belgian superhero Éclair and finds himself in Antwerp where the King of Belgian has been kidnapped.
With his new superhero partner Blitzen (a muscle-bound German frau who first takes him dancing in a techno club) Tick matches wits with Octopaganini, an eight-armed villain who is a master violin player and also does battle with The Eastern Bloc Robot Cowboy, a deranged gun slinging vending machine from behind the Iron Curtain.
Meanwhile, back in the States, Éclair and sidekick Arthur take on the Breadmaster and his army of tiny gingerbread men. Goodness wins out when the cookie army goes prematurely stale, prompting Éclair to make the observation that, “Once again we find that you can’t disguise the foul taste of evil with artificial, or even natural sweeteners.”
Are you with me here?
Go buy the DVD; trust me, you’ll love it.