Looking back at the art and attitude of Jamie Hewlett's Tank Girl

[garethb2]

Originally published at: Looking back at the art and attitude of Jamie Hewlett's Tank Girl | Boing Boing

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[Tamsin_Bailey]

I loved early Tank Girl and Deadline was a great magazine/comic/whatever full of bonkers and amazing strips and series.

Tank Girl had a real impact because it was smart and funny and weird, and people still riff on it today because it still resonates, even if it is dirty, crude and over-the-top, or maybe because of it.
Artists still look to Hewlett and Tank Girl for inspiration, including me:

But then, and not to be that girl, but I am going to be that girl, it turned shit once the creators let someone else do it. I picked this up this week, a gift from my local library.

Avoid it. Instead, revel in the original rip-roaring fun of the original Hewlett and Martin run and channel the 90s vibe where a skinhead girl with a tank could say “Fuck!” drink beer, smoke fags and bang a kangaroo and be a role model.

[ee0r]

I re-watched the somewhat terrible movie recently, and noted that the comet that wrecks the world in Tank Girl arrives in 2022.

[1000YearBan]

[teknocholer]

@Tamsin_Bailey

bang a kangaroo

[bobtato]

@ee0r

I re-watched the somewhat terrible movie recently

It is, but I really liked how when Malcolm McDowell is on life support the ECG display is in the style of Hokusai’s Great Wave off Kanagawa.

[beschizza]

@Tamsin_Bailey

Avoid it

That 2000’s era stuff was terrible, but the current runs are basically a tween-friendly pastiche of the early stuff. The light-hearted cute cartoon professionalism of it might grate if you’re really into old TG, but I enjoy it when I run into it. Wikipedia implies that the creators had a crowdfunded “come to Jesus” moment in the mid 2010s and since then things have been a lot better.

[Brainspore]

It would have been fun to see her do a cartoon crossover with the Gorillaz in a music video or something.

[capnjimbo]

Maybe I watched it at just the right age, but I love the hell out of the movie.

[Tamsin_Bailey]

That’s kind of good to know. The one I mentioned above was from 2010 and while the plot was silly (fair enough, it’s Tank Girl), it felt really juvenile and stupid, like a gratuitously violent Carry On film written by teenage giggling boys.

Which I am aware is also a description of some of the best Tank Girl stories…

But it just didn’t land. Well, a bad patch happens to most comics media, maybe I’ll like a bit of Tank Girl Lite!

[ee0r]

Yeah, there’s a lot of nice design work in there. They must have had a lot of fun making it.

[ee0r]

There’s a lot to love about that movie. It’s only “somewhat” terrible. It’s entertaining for sure.

[Otherbrother]

@Brainspore

It would have been fun to see her do a cartoon crossover with the Gorillaz in a music video or something.

Per the wiki site they existed in the same universe so the opportunity was certainly there.

Hewlett has once stated that Tank Girl and Gorillaz are set within the same universe. When a fan asked if they were in the same universe, Hewlett responded with “All of these characters take place in my universe, so yes the same."[1]Before Gorillaz, Albarn’s other band Blur made various cameo appearances in many of Hewlett’s projects, including Tank Girl in an issue where Blur’s guitarist Graham Coxon saves the day with a very bouncy inflatable castle.[2]

[Brainspore]

@Otherbrother

Per the wiki site they existed in the same universe so the opportunity was certainly there.

Funny that when the band finally DID do a cartoon crossover it was a character from the Powerpuff Girls instead of one of Hewlett’s other projects.

Ace

[fnordius]

I think that’s because Hewlett loses interest almost as quickly as he gains it, so when Damon wanted to keep making music as the Gorillaz he had to fall back to other artists.