{"id":12668,"date":"2014-11-02T12:02:18","date_gmt":"2014-11-02T12:02:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=12668"},"modified":"2014-11-02T12:02:18","modified_gmt":"2014-11-02T12:02:18","slug":"the-power-of-tank-girl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2014\/11\/02\/the-power-of-tank-girl\/","title":{"rendered":"The Power of Tank Girl"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nBy <\/strong>Alan Martin<\/strong>, <\/strong>Rufus Dayglo<\/strong>, <\/strong>Ashley Wood<\/strong> & (Titan Comics)
\nISBN: 978-1-78276-064-1<\/p>\n

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 8\/10<\/strong><\/p>\n

By golly, doesn’t time – and the occasional burst of bullets – fly! It’s hard to believe that our recent past is so far away. Back in the garishly gritty 1980s when I was tea-boy on Warrior<\/strong> magazine (still one of the most influential independent comics ever produced) there was a frantic buzz of feverish creativity in the British comics scene which seemed to say that any young upstart could hit the big time.<\/p>\n

Possibly the most upstarty of all were art-students Jamie Hewlett & Alan Martin (and, tangentially, Phillip Bond) who prowled the local convention circuit impressing the hell out of everybody with their photocopied fanzine Atomtan<\/strong>. At the back of issue #1 was a pin-up\/ad for a dubious looking young lady with a big, Big, BIG gun and her own armoured transport. And now it’s suddenly 30 years later\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Commissioned by Brett Ewins and Steve Dillon for their new publishing venture Deadline<\/strong> (a pop-culture magazine with loads of cool comics strips), the absurdist tales of a feisty, well-armed chick roaming the wilds of a futuristic Australia with her Kangaroo boy-friend Booga<\/em> caught the imagination of a large portion of the public. There was even a movie\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

After many years dallying with a sordid plethora of different publishers, the salty, soldierly slapper found her way to Titan Books – self-appointed custodian of the Best of British strip art – who comprehensively remastered her old adventures and spin-offs into a series of unmissable volumes.<\/p>\n

Now as Tank Girl continues to periodically sneak out for further frantic capers, they’ve added another tome to the canon as <\/strong>The Power of Tank Girl<\/strong> gathers recent serial exploits The Gifting<\/strong>, Visions of Booga <\/strong>and The Royal Escape<\/strong> (published in the USA by IDW between November 2007 and September 2010) into one stunning pocket – or is that pouch? – sized compendium of exuberant excess and blood-drenched hilarity\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Scripted throughout by Martin, the mucky-mouthed mania begins with a dash of poesy in ‘The Power’<\/em> and a pulsating pin-up before a transcendental epic ‘The Royal Escape’ <\/em>(with art by the incomparable Rufus Dayglo) opens with ‘Part One: The Golden Egg’<\/em> wherein Tank Girl, paramour Booga<\/em> (a most manly and lovable kangaroo) and gal pals Jackie<\/em> (Boat Girl<\/em>), Barney<\/em> and Jet Girl<\/em> are moments from death at the guns (and bombs, bayonets, RPGs etc\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6) of an extremely pissed off but much depleted army.<\/p>\n

With their backs to the shattered walls and ammo gone, Jet Girl is forced to throw the last thing she possesses: a mysterious golden egg she has owned since childhood\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

The deed somehow turns her semi-catatonic and the mismatched team are forced to split up. As the gritty warriors hunker down, Barney and Jackie go on a mystic quest to recover the egg. The trek takes them up a mountain to meet skeevy shaman Wanka<\/em> in ‘The Bulldog Breed’<\/em> who guides them to an eagle’s nest with a broken eggshell containing a teeny-tiny, very confused Jet Girl\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

While they yomp back to the battle, the hard-pressed hold-out heroes are reduced to defending themselves with little more than a ‘Dead Man’s Sandwich’<\/em> even as their returning friends stumble across a gigantic statue deep in the Bush.<\/p>\n

The monolith looks like Jet Girl and when the weeny wonder finds herself compelled to crawl into it, the statue comes to terrifying life\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Now possessed of an awesome unstoppable walking weapon, the wanderers return in time to make ‘A Terrible Souffle’<\/em> of the invading army in a shattering spectacle of intense and sustained carnage\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

After a potpourri of covers and groovy pics, odd ode ‘Last of the Jensen Interceptors’<\/em> leads into a nostalgic nightmare when Tank Girl determines to attend at all costs a reunion gig by her fave girlhood manufactured Boy-Band in ‘The Funsters Will Play’<\/em> (with art by Ashley Wood)\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

A procession of fearsome fashion pages comes next as ‘Keys to the Tank’, ‘Booga in Extreme Jungle Wear’<\/em>, ‘Jet Girl in Stealth Flying Gear’<\/em>, ‘Barney in Urban Camouflage’<\/em> and ‘Cruiser Tank in full Racing Livery’<\/em> depict how the most stylish mass-murderers make the scene whilst ‘Tank Girl in Bad Camouflage’<\/em> and the concluding chapter ‘Uncle Smiffy’s Tombstone’<\/em> returns to strip storytelling to deliver a daft drama disclosing the bloodstained origins of Boat Girl\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Dayglo resumes the arty stuff for Visions of Booga <\/strong>which finds the lovers sucked into a Mafia plot and sent to prison in ‘Falling Angel Blues’<\/em>. Unfortunately they’re also caught up in the daring escape of the Don’s favourite brother from the prison transport and have to go on the lam from both the cops and the mob.<\/p>\n

The best disguise seems to be switching genders but perhaps they haven’t really thought it through\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

The pursuit continues and intensifies when they kill one of the Mafioso, accidentally acquiring in the process ultimate mystic panacea the ‘Book of Hipster Gold’<\/em> and stumbling onto unhappy diner waitress Barney who just happens to have an old SDKFZ 251 Mittlerer Schutzenpanzerwagen <\/em>parked out back\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

On the run again (but now in a perfectly working Nazi armoured halftrack) the fugitives head for the West Coast where a seasoned hippy dwells. He’s the only person on Earth who can be trusted with the eldritch tome of peace and perfection but as ‘Letters to Earth’<\/em> shows, The Mob never quit and hippies – even the sublime and most cool Spanky Smith<\/em> – aren’t what they used to be.<\/p>\n

Still, he does find time to marry Tank Girl and Booga before the bad guys turn up for the blistering and bizarre conclusion ‘Which Cuts the Finest, the Sabre or the Blade of Grass?’<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Following some more covers, The Gifting<\/strong> opens with a batch of illustrated Beat poems extolling ‘Digging the Lonely Eternity’<\/em>, before a bit of girl goss gets all scatological whilst solving the pressing mystery of ‘The Dogshit in Barney’s Handbag’<\/em> (Wood art) after which Martin & Dayglo spin us back to the 1970s for ‘Tank Girl and Friends in Our Glam Day Out’<\/em> revisiting such iconic treats as Evel Knievel, Chopper Bikes, Pub Lunches and much, much more, whilst Wood’s go on the art encompasses a ‘Barney Pull-out Poster’<\/em> and extended paean to days past ‘X2-38’<\/em> which sees Booga lose his heart to a toy raygun from his childhood which becomes his ‘Reason for Living’<\/em>, before pausing for a brief ‘Tank Girl Haiku’<\/em><\/p>\n

Dayglo’s smartly rendered ‘Bonko Patrol’<\/em> explains the downside of truly heavy ordnance before Wood wanders back to limn another extended battle against evil and ill manners in ‘The Innocent Die First’<\/em>.<\/p>\n

This sterling parable finds Tank Girl and Booga at a luxurious hotel they’ve just purchased, happily whiling away their days insulting the clientele and starting fights until they offend the wrong punter and start a full scale war in ‘Easy Action’<\/em>. The conflict naturally escalates until the cataclysmic ‘Attack on the Foreskin Bridge Hotel’<\/em> ends the dispute in a most unlikely manner\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

‘Barney and Jet Girl in Stone Fox Chase’<\/em> (Dayglo) then pairs the dynamic duo with Style Icon Adam Ant<\/em> for a bout of carnage and chaos after which ‘Tank Girl Tat’<\/em> offers the kind of merchandise you’ll never see anywhere else and Wood illuminates a quiet night in with nothing to do but ‘Kill Jumbo’<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Booga then plays stage magician to entertain ‘The Kids from 23A’<\/em> with horrific results before getting stuck trying to buy lingerie in ‘The Gifting’<\/em> and everything wraps up nicely with another selection of moodful poetic meanderings comprising ‘Like a Roast Potato in a Pick-Up Truck’<\/em>, ‘The Sunshine of Your Arse’<\/em>, ‘The Ox’<\/em> and ‘You Are Loved’<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Never too wedded to the concept of internal logic, chronological order, narrative consistency, linguistic restraint or spelling (so if you’re pedantic be warned!), this latest compote of outrageous and hilarious cartoon phantasmagoria revels in a glorious mud-bath of social iconoclasm, in-yer-face absurdity, decades of British Cultural Sampling and the ever-popular addictive sex ‘n’ violence.<\/p>\n

Wildly absurdist, intoxicatingly adorable and packed to the gills with covers, spot art and other pictorial pleasures, <\/strong>The Power of Tank Girl<\/strong> is an ever-so-cool rollercoaster thrill-ride and lifestyle touchstone for life’s incurable rebels and undying Rude Britannians, so if you’ve never seen the anarchic, surreal and culturally soused peculiarity that is Tank Girl, bastard love child of 2000AD<\/strong> and Love and Rockets<\/strong>, you’ve missed a truly unique experience\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 and remember, she doesn’t care if you like her, just so long as you notice her.
\nTank Girl and all related characters are \u00e2\u201e\u00a2 & \u00c2\u00a9 2014 Jamie Hewlett and Alan Martin. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Alan Martin, Rufus Dayglo, Ashley Wood & (Titan Comics) ISBN: 978-1-78276-064-1 Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 8\/10 By golly, doesn’t time – and the occasional burst of bullets – fly! It’s hard to believe that our recent past is so far away. Back in the garishly gritty 1980s when I was tea-boy on Warrior … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “The Power of Tank Girl”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[42,90,125,105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-of-british","category-cartooning-classics","category-humour","category-mature-reading"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-3ik","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12668\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}