At the end of the last issue of Tank Girl, things in Tank Girl’s life sucked like a vacuum cleaner at an oral pleasure convention. Sub Girl, miraculously brought back from the dead and amnesiac as several shades of fuck, had regained her mind, lost her marbles, gone on a psychopathic rampage, been locked in a puzzle-box of death by an old fart who was obsessed by her and ultimately drowned to buggery, dying damp and cold in Tank Girl’s arms.
Granted, the gang had just discovered a shit-ton of Nazi gold, so swings, roundabouts, y’know, but no amount of yellow shiny stuff could make up for the loss of so pivotal a pal as Sub Girl.
Tank Girl’s back, and this has a more cyclic, one-shot feel, starting and ending with the same essential question – what the hell do you spend a shit-ton of Nazi gold on in the Outback?
But in the meantime, there are two things that happen to fill space and page in this comic-book. One of them, you can get to Dingo’s bollocks if you think we’re revealing – if you find out all the really cool things from a review, why buy the comic-book, eh? And you really want to buy this comic-book, mostly because of the ultra-cool thing we’re not going to tell you about, so there. Get your arse in your tank, get down to your comic-book store and get busy with your ordering fingers.
Most of the issue though is taken up with a farcical vengeance-quest. Those of you who’ve been following closely will remember that Sub Girl found her way back to the Tank Girl gang after living for a decade or more as a nice-girl city antique dealer with a whacking great hole in her memory. She came by TG’s original tank when it was sold to her dealership by someone who’d won it in a card game with a kangaroo.
This issue sees Tank Girl discover the truth, and decide to punish Booga, the kangaroo in question, and delightful dimwit Barney too, who if she didn’t exactly aid and abet his casual loss of the tank, then at least did less than a gnat’s dick to stop him. The two are turfed from the tank at gun-point, each to endure their punishment. Barney is forced to write a 2000-word, uncliched, heartfelt, sincere, no-messing letter of apology for her part in the affair. Booga, meanwhile must walk up the (dum, dum, daaaaaaaaah!) Furry Road.
Yes, it’s a magnificent, fuck-you piss-take on the new re-invention of ‘the male Tank Girl,’ Mad Max. What the Furry Road is, and why it’s such a punishment for the cavalier kangaroo, would be spoiling a large part of the fun of this issue for you, but let’s just imagine the issue ends with Booga being ordered to show the Tank Girl gang his marsupial marriage-meat, and have it viciously, hilariously ridiculed, and you might just get a fraction of the idea (Note to writer Alan Martin: please can this be a real thing, cos there’s a pussy-grabbing Presidential candidate who could do with a trip up the Furry Road. Just sayin’). Booga walks the road, then rather limps back down it, duly chastened by what happens to any male that travels that road to physical purgatory.
It's by no means the fullest, richest issue of Tank Girl in comic-book history, this, but it’s certainly a giggle, and it does have something supercool in it, about which you can do one, remember? But take our word for it, you’re gonna wanna see this one.
Artwise, what’s to tell you? Brett Parson continues to deliver the punky, angular style that makes Tank Girl what it is, there’s a solid sepia-wash on the issue, and the Furry fate of Booga is delivered with tongue firmly in cheek.
After the colossal bummer of the end of the Sub Girl storyline, you owe yourself Tank Girl Gold #1, cos it’ll put a smile on your face, a giggle in your chest, a punch in the air and a cross-legged feeling in the Trumpy-grabbables.
Grab yourself some Gold today.
Tony Fyler lives in a cave of wall-to-wall DVDs and Blu-Rays somewhere fairly nondescript in Wales, and never goes out to meet the "Real People". Who, Torchwood, Sherlock, Blake, Treks, Star Wars, obscure stuff from the 70s and 80s and comedy from the dawn of time mean he never has to. By day, he runs an editing house, largely as an excuse not to have to work for a living. He's currently writing a Book. With Pages and everything. Follow his progress at FylerWrites.co.uk
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