Tank Girl first appeared in 1988 from creators Jamie Hewlett and Alan Martin and ended in 1996. It was a relatively popular comic that was made into a pretty crappy movie in 1995 starring Lori Petty as Tank Girl and a young Naomi Watts as Jet Girl. Though Martin resurrected the character in 2007 (Hewlett created the band Gorillaz with Blurs Damon Albarn several years ago and currently has no plans to return as TGs artist) and has been writing numerous Tank Girl mini-series since then, its never lost that early 90s atmosphere. Reading the first issue of Solid State Tank Girl, the latest TG mini-series feels like a British sitcom from the early 90s like Red Dwarf. The humour is lame, Tank Girl herself feels dated (and really old - is she supposed to look like a middle-aged punk?), and the comic feels at least 15 years too late. The plot is that Boogas ham radio is broken so he and TG go to get it fixed. Booga gets electrocuted by one of the gadgets in the store and goes into a coma and the clerk shrinks TG and co. into a small vessel, and inject them into Boogas body to find the source of the problem and fix it. Thats right, this is Innerspace but with Tank Girl instead of Dennis Quaid. Ignoring all the strange plot developments involving the radio shops clerk - he can not only diagnose medical conditions (from one look at Booga he can tell hes suffering from a form of neurological embolism), but hes got a science vessel in his back room and hes invented a shrink ray! And why isnt Booga taken to hospital? Because the clerk says theres no time to get him to a hospital and they probably wouldnt be able to help him anyway. Right because hospitals dont help sick people - radio shop clerks do. I know this is in the vein of TGs humour but it still reads really poorly. Martin simply isnt trying with the script and the plotting comes off as contrived and lazy. So its up to TG to fix Booga so they enact Innerspaces plot line with the main event being TG and co. driving into one of Boogas testicles and finding a miniature baby growing in his scrotum. Minus the questionable humour - I dont object in terms of taste, I just find it really unfunny to have actual ham in a ham radio, or making a pun about going to the ball when driving into a testicle - this is simply a really boring comic. It tries to be funny and fails. The plot and story have been done before and better too. It just feels like a totally pointless comic - Alan Martin fulfilling a contract obligation, because it reads like he is completely out of ideas. The comic ends with a backup feature called Make Them All Die where TG and co. slaughter scores of mutants with guns and knives. Its gratuitous and meaningless, just a lot of killing for no reason and, like the main feature, youre left wondering why anyone bothered publishing this in the first place. And the artist, Warwick Johnson Cadwell? I could say the art is stylised but really it looks like this comic was drawn by a 10 year old with no hands. Its a really ugly looking comic that again feels like it wouldve been cool in the early 90s, kind of slacker chic-ish, but now? It just looks crap. This comic is bad art coupled with a bad script.
Even if you are a Tank Girl fan, Im not sure if youd like this - its just baffling that someone thought that publishing this was a good idea, or that this is even the finished product. It doesnt even read like a C-list idea, it just reads like someone going off the most minimal of suggestions and fashioning a series out of it. Solid State Tank Girl #1 is a complete artistic and comedic failure - this comic is an indication that the character either needs a new writer or needs to be retired as the relic of a bygone era it feels like.
Solid State Tank Girl #1 by Alan Martin and Warwick Johnson Cadwell is out on Wednesday at your local comics shop