Comic Book News

Tank Girl rolls back onto bookshelves this November

By M&C News Oct 18, 2007, 22:25 GMT

She's stolen the tiara from Princess Diana's coiffed head. She's been an international bounty hunter and fugitive outlaw. She's traveled with a mutated kangaroo and owned a world-famous collection of novelty pencil sharpeners. And, oh yeah, she drives a bitchin' tank.

Tank Girl-the riot-grrrl punkadelic avatar of writer Alan Martin and artist James Hewitt, who later went on to co-create the groundbreaking virtual band Gorillaz-blasts her way onto bookstore shelves next month, with IDW Publishing's new trade paperback The Gifting, collecting the hit four-issue miniseries. Originally published in 1988 in the U.K.'s Deadline magazine, Tank Girl led to a bidding war among U.S. publishers-finally won by Dark Horse-before hitting the silver screen in a 1995 movie starring Lori Petty and Ice-T.

But the film left both the fans and the creators feeling like the character had been crushed under Hollywood's tank treads, and after a brief stint at DC's Vertigo imprint, the character cooled her engines for more than 10 years-until IDW fired them up again earlier this year.

The new trade paperback features an array of non-linear stories-just what you'd expect from a proper Tank Girl collection-with titles that run the gamut from The Dogsh*t in Barney's Handbag to The Innocent Die First. But what you wouldn't expect is Tank Girl's new look: with her 1980s radical anti-chic style seeming tired 20  years later, the character instead has rebelled with couture straight out of Good Housekeeping magazine.

"Like a high school teacher from the mid-1980s," says Martin, who collaborated on the new stories with fan-favorite Australian illustrator Ashley Wood, assisted by British artist Rufus Dayglo. "Pick clothes from your boring auntie's old wardrobe, and that's how she looks."

Will she get her famous goggles and helmet back? Does her housedress cover her shoulder ink? And will she strip down to her underwear before it's all over?

"It's a wild, wild ride," says IDW Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Chris Ryall.  "Just about everything you could imagine happening does, as well as a few things you never would have imagined. Fans have been waiting for years for the return of the real Tank Girl, and these guys did not disappoint."

Tank Girl: The Gifting, a 104-page, full-color trade paperback, will be in comics shops and bookstores on November 7th.