Tank Girl

Character Name	Tank Girl
Image
Publisher	Deadline Publications Ltd. Dark Horse Comics DC Vertigo IDW Publishing Image Comics Titan Comics
Debut	Deadline #1 (Oct. 1988)
Creators	Alan Martin Jamie Hewlett
Full Name	Rebecca Buck (Fonzie Rebecca Buckler)
Species	Human
Homeworld	Earth
Partners	Booga Stevie Barney Sub Girl Jet Girl
Powers	Can pilot any kind of tank Random acts of sex and violence Can outrun any ice cream van
Hero	y
Villain	y
Module	Subbox yes Italic Title no Schedule Irregular Format Limited series Main Char Team Tank Girl, Booga, Stevie, Barney, Sub Girl, Jet Girl, Camp Koala Limited y Genre Independent Science fiction/Humour Writers Alan Martin, Alan Grant, Peter Milligan Artists Jamie Hewlett, Philip Bond, Glyn Dillon, Ashley Wood, Warwick Johnson-Cadwell, Jim Mahfood, Brett Parson, Jonathan Edwards, Craig Knowles, Rufus Dayglo, Andy Pritchett, Mike McMahon

Publication history

Martin and Hewlett first met in the mid-1980s in Worthing, while studying at The West Sussex College of Art and Design (WSCD, later renamed Northbrook College). Martin was in the college band The University Smalls with fellow comics enthusiast Philip Bond. One of their songs was called "Rocket Girl". They had started adding the suffix 'girl' to everything habitually after the release of the Supergirl movie, but "Rocket Girl" was a student at college on whom Bond had a crush and who apparently bore a striking resemblance the Love and Rockets character Hopey. Martin and Hewlett began collaborating on a comic/fanzine called Atomtan, and while working on this, Hewlett had drawn:

A grotty-looking beefer of a girl brandishing an unfeasible firearm. One of our friends was working on a project to design a pair of headphones and was basing his design on the type used by World War II tank drivers. His studio in Worthing was littered with loads of photocopies of combat vehicles. I pinched one of the images and gave it to Jamie who then stuck it behind his grotty girl illustration and then added a logo which read 'Tank Girl'.

After 1996

After the 1995 film, Hewlett went on to create the band Gorillaz with Blur's Damon Albarn. Martin has also played in various bands, and written various screenplays and scripts.

After a long publishing hiatus, the character returned in 2007 in Tank Girl: The Gifting, a four-issue limited series written by Martin and illustrated by Australian artist Ashley Wood, which was published by IDW Publishing. This was the first new Tank Girl comic material since the final two issues of the four issue series Tank Girl: Apocalypse in 1996. The four-issue limited series Tank Girl: Visions of Booga, by Martin and artist Rufus Dayglo, was released in 2008 by IDW, as was Tank Girl: Armadillo and a Bushel of Other Stories, a Tank Girl novel authored by Martin and published by Titan Books.

Since then, Tank Girl has appeared on a regular basis in various one-shots and limited series, published by IDW, Image Comics, and Titan Comics. The regular creative team is Alan Martin and Brett Parson.

Titan Books released The Hole of Tank Girl on 28 September 2012, which encompasses the original Hewlett and Martin material, as well as additional content.

The three-issue limited series 21st Century Tank Girl debuted on 10 June 2015.

Martin and artist Warwick Johnson-Cadwell have also created a kid-friendly spin-off called Young Tank Girl, published in the digital anthology Moose Kid Comics.

In 2019, Titan Comics debuted Tank Girl, publicized as Tank Girl's first ongoing series, with an indicia listing the book as Tank Girl Ongoing. From January to May 2019, the first four issues were cover-titled Tank Girl: Action Alley, and from July to December 2019, the next four issues were cover-titled Tank Girl Forever.

Characters

• Tank Girl: Her real name in the strip is Rebecca Buck, but this is very rarely mentioned. She became a tank driver and worked as a bounty hunter, before shooting a heavily decorated officer, having mistaken him for her father, and failing to deliver colostomy bags to President Hogan, the incontinent Head of State in Australia, resulting in him publicly embarrassing himself at a large international trade conference. These events resulted in Tank Girl becoming an outlaw with a multi-million dollar bounty on her head. She is prone to random acts of sex and violence, hair dyeing, flatulence, nose picking, vomiting, spitting, and more than occasional drunkenness. She also has the ability to outrun any ice cream van – even Mr. Whippy. Tank Girl typically wears cut-off T-shirts or simply a bra, along with shorts and plenty of earrings and necklaces. Her natural hair color appears to be blonde, though she has appeared in many different hairstyles.
• Booga: A mutated kangaroo, formerly a successful toy designer of "products Santa would've sacrificed a reindeer for," and presently Tank Girl's devoted boyfriend. She met him when he sneaked into her tank one night to pinch a pair of her knickers. He is a big Dame Edna fan and once impersonated Bill Clinton. Booga, often against his will, always does the cooking, particularly the great British institution of tea. He follows Tank Girl everywhere and does, by his own admission, whatever she tells him. This includes murder.
• The talking stuffed animals:
• Camp Koala: A stitchy, brown, gay, koala-shaped stuffed toy described as "the Jeremy Thorpe of comics", whom TG sodomizes with a hot banana. Camp Koala died tragically when they were playing baseball with live hand grenades which Camp eagerly caught in the outfield, exploding on impact, resulting in a violent, bloody, and gruesome death. After a tearless and comical funeral service, the other characters go to a toy store and buy a new one. Camp Koala is known for visiting occasionally as a guardian angel. He is the only character TG has ever admitted to loving.
• Squeaky toy rat: A squeaky toy rat.
• Mr. Precocious: A "small Shakespearean mutant" who looks a bit like a mini bipedal pink elephant, though may possibly be a bilby.
• Stevie: A wild-haired blond Aboriginal man who owns a convenience store and chain-smokes. Since he is TG's ex-boyfriend, Booga is always a bit jealous of him. He has various familial ties and connections with Aboriginal culture and remote traditionalist tribespeople.
• Barney: Busted out of a mental hospital by TG, she is more or less insane. In The Odyssey, she is responsible for killing the whole cast, thereby sending them all to the land of the dead, from which TG was forced to save them by finding the Prince of Farts.
• Sub Girl (real name unknown, although a trading card for the film once listed her real name as 'Subrina'): Described as "like a beautiful flower floating in the loo", she pilots a submarine. A friend of TG's since childhood, she used to come round her house with Jet Girl and try on her mum's underwear.
• Jet Girl (real name unknown): A talented mechanic who flies a jet. All her friends call her "boring" (she has admitted to being a big fan of Rod Stewart).

Collected editions

Tank Girl has been collected into a number of trade paperbacks over the years. The entire back catalogue was reprinted by Titan Books in 2002 and these books were "re-mastered" in anniversary editions, stripped of their subsequently-added computer colouring and line work repaired. In 2018 the entire Hewlett and Martin back catalogue was once again reprinted under the "Tank Girl Colour Classics" banner, this time as collectible hardbacks, with all-new colouring and extra material.

Film

Tank Girl (film)
The comic was also adapted into a critically and financially unsuccessful film, albeit with a small cult following. The film featured Lori Petty as Tank Girl and Naomi Watts as Jet Girl. Martin and Hewlett are known for speaking poorly of the experience, with Martin calling it "a bit of a sore point" for them.

In September 2019, a Tank Girl reboot movie was reported to be in development with Margot Robbie's production company LuckyChap Entertainment optioned rights from MGM, Robbie co-produce with her partners Tom Ackerley and Josey McNamara, Mallory Westfall writing and Miles Joris-Peyrafitte directing.

See also

• Action Girl Comics
• The Invisibles
• Kill Your Boyfriend
• Lesbian pulp fiction
• Portrayal of women in comics
• Riot Grrrl

References

• Alan Martin on Tank Girl – Interview, Sci-Fi Online, 6 July 2016
• Imelda, Whelehan, Esther, Sonnet, Regendered Reading: , Tank Girl, and Postmodernist Intertextuality, Cartmell, Deborah, Trash Aesthetics, Pluto Press, Sydney, 1997
• Wired, John K., Bates, Wired 2.12: Tank Girl Stomps Hollywood
• Analysis of the parallels between Tank Girl: The Odyssey and Homer and Joyce's works
• Keeping It (Un)real, July 2005, Wired, July 9, 2014
• THE HOLE OF TANK GIRL – OUT TODAY! – Tank Girl, 6 July 2016, bot: unknown, 28 October 2012
• 21st Century Tank Girl, 2017-05-18, bot: unknown, 2017-05-18
• Freeman, John, Moose Kid Comics launches today, features Young Tank Girl and much more!, downthetubes.net, 20 June 2014, 13 August 2018
• Just heard that Margot Robbie's company have optioned rights from MGM to make a new Tank Girl movie - now several months into development. We haven't been contacted by any of the parties involved with the project, so not sure if there will be any input from the original creators.pic.twitter.com/7RxbV4qLFt, Alan, Martin, September 9, 2019, November 19, 2019
• Exclusive: Margot Robbie's 'Tank Girl' Movie Lands Director Miles Joris-Peyrafitte, Sneider, Jeff, September 10, 2019, Collider, September 12, 2019, live

External links

• Official website
• Tank Girl at Don Markstein's Toonopedia. Archived from the original on September 29, 2015.

• Suicide Girls Interview – With Alan Martin about the Tank Girl relaunch
• Alan Martin interview Archived 15 September 2007, at web.archive.org – about the 2007 relaunch from IDW comics.
• Jamie Hewlett interview about influences