Ben Edlund is well known for being the creator of "The Tick", but is also a film producer and Screenwriter of note, being the man behind the planet Bob and a frequent writer on a variety of television shows.
Edlund was born September 20, 1968 in Pembroke MA. He graduated from Silver Lake Regional High School in 1986, being voted Most Artistic by his class.
He developed an appreciation for comic books out of not having a license, and having to have his comic book loving friends drive him everywhere, which included frequent trips on their part to said stores.
Ben developed the character of "The Tick" while studying Film at the Massachusetts College of Art. He had developed the character on his own without any serious direction for it, when he was asked to do some filler cartoons by New England Comics (NEC), a retail comic book store based in Boston. However, when the issue they were working on fell through, The Tick became the main feature in 1988.
It was an instant hit and developed a huge cult following, despite the fact that he only wrote 12 issues in 5 years. Edlund states that much of the success at least partially because: "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."
While still in college, Kiscom, a New Jersey-based toy licensing and design company, got in touch with Edlund, hoping to develop The Tick into a toy/cartoon line along the lines of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. This lead to several years of meetings involving free lunches with various firms, but generally just provided variety while he finished out college, until he was introduced to Sunbow, who wanted to hand the project off to Fox Children's Network.
Ben was teamed up with writer Richard Libmann-Smith to produce the first season of scripts for The Tick. Despite being infamous for working at his own pace despite deadlines speeding by on comics work, Ben adapted rather well to cartoon production. The only real hangup about the production for him was that any script they produced had to pass by a committe of Fox Reps before being put forward, which caused some level of friction. It also lead to some of the darker characters from the comic, as well as some of the sexual overtones, being dropped from the cartoon.
Ben counts the fact that the cartoon was never as successful as TMNT a good thing, because it meant that the cartoon was allowed to exist as a more sincere and less market driven production, though he admits, "although I would be much more wealthy at this point. That failure, to me, makes The Tick a much more sincere proposal."
Ben remained extremely attentive to the production process, making sure that the cartoon remained true to the comic both in content, and in the style of the animation, something which drew definite notice to the cartoon... among many other 90's cartoons, it lacked the repetitious, computer based style, and in terms of time period, had a much more 70's feel to it, which allowed it to stand out on it's own more fully.
By the time the show actually debuted in '94, Edlund had become firmly entrenched in Screenwriting and television production, and has firmly stated that if there is another Tick comic, there will be only one. "I'm probably going to do only one more issue, and it's very much on the back burner. I view it as being a kind of summation of my position on The Tick character. At the time The Tick was created I was a virginal, middle-class, white, uninterested student of film, whose favorite filmmaker was Steven Spielberg. So I was really a much different person when this character was fully formed. So far he's proven to be fairly pliant, because the level of subtext and sophistication has matured. And that's probably why it connects with so many people from different age groups."
Edlund also served as Art Director in 1993 for the film "Manhattan by Numbers", and directed a 7 minute short film "Crawley" in 1999. He also wrote A, B, C... Manhattan, which was directed by the same person as "Manhattan by Numbers". In 2000 he wrote the screenplay for the Don Bluth animated science-fiction film Titan-AE along with Joss Whedon of Buffy The Vampire Slayer fame, which likely lead partially to his being a writer both for Angel and Firefly, as well as producer for the latter. He also wrote Santa Claus Conquers the Martians in 2002.
Between 2000 and 2003, Edlund worked on the live action production of The Tick, directed by Barry Sonnenfeld. Like many of the quirky productions brought to Fox over the years, it did not last quite long enough to see it's full potential. Not even a full season, in fact. It went on and off the air in the Summer of '03.
One supposes that Edlund is currently working on whatever Whedon is working on currently (aside from various side projects), but he is a fairly private person, and there isn't much information on the subject. But whatever it is, judging by past projects, it will be worth the wait.
Sources:
www.imdb.com
http://www.awn.com/mag/issue2.4/awm2.4pages/2.4reberedlund.html
http://www.tvtome.com/tvtome/servlet/PersonDetail/personid-62339
http://www.thetick.ws/ben.html
http://www.lisahammer.com/filmmaker/benedlund.html