On a rooftop in New York, a man in a blue rubber suit stands with his hands on his hips, his pelvis cocked jauntily forward, proudly looking out over the city. His city. He is saying—no, proclaiming—that he is a tool of destiny, determined to protect his town from evildoers in whatever form they may take: “It’s not supposed to be easy; it’s not supposed to be comfortable. It’s supposed to be dangerous and interesting. That’s the hero’s journey. That’s why they get up in the morning, to go mano-a-monomyth with the darkness. To win the elixir and save the world.”

This gobbledygook could easily be a closing monologue from a Marvel Netflix series—the self-serious Daredevil, especially—or something that Ben Affleck would intone while sweating in the Lycra clutch of the Batsuit. We are saturated with superheroes these days; geek culture is mainstream culture, and almost literally the only spectacle Hollywood can give us. A trip to the multiplex or a trip on your small screen, from ABC to the CW to Amazon, is a journey through existing I.P., Marvel battling DC in a mano-a-mano battle to the death—and every potential franchise possibility is being squeezed from the nearly hundred-year history of superhero literature. Even a girl with the powers of a squirrel (you know: a bushy tail, powerful buck teeth, and “squirrel agility”) is in the mix to get her own Marvel movie, if Anna Kendrick’s wishes come true.

Superheroes, the lot of them, need someone to poke fun at their tropes and clichés, and that’s where Amazon’s new comedy pilot, The Tick—and said monologue—comes in. It’s a reboot of a 30-year-old, cult comic-book series that’s died and risen again more times than Buffy the Vampire Slayer. A generation has been lucky enough to grow up with it: in the 90s, The Tick was a cartoon series that lived on in Comedy Central reruns, and in 2001, a short-lived live-action version with a perfectly cast Patrick Warburton made its debut. This newest iteration of The Tick is markedly less cartoony than the previous one, and it’s also a bit of a Trojan horse.

But according to creator Ben Edlund, the most important part remains: “It’s still dumb, which is important.” As he explained in a phone call, “It’s the product of totally earnest idiots who think it’s just awesome, and there isn’t a single punch line in there. They’re showing only the things you need to see to have the most poignant, lyrical experience, but they’re just wrong.”

This Amazon pilot still has a “weird, dark, epic scope,” said Edlund, who speaks in italics and capital letters, his booming voice sounding just a little bit like the Tick himself. The hero’s headspace is a direct response to the seriousness of late 20th-century superhero comics, in which characters like Daredevil fought ninjas and growled about “My city!” The Tick takes that pomposity to another, more absurdist level, as he’s “an orator who lost his podium and is just shooting off at the mouth the whole time.”