Frequently Asked Questions about Tank Girl

About the Comic

Who is Tank Girl?

Well, Tank Girl's attitude is the what defines the comic. It's the fact that she takes no shit that makes her so appealing.

"People world wide are living a lie and run their lives around a system that is complete bollocks."

Society forces people into little pigeon holes. You conform to your group, that's it. Men do one thing, women do another. There are all sorts of arbitrary rules just put there to keep people in line. "Be like this and you will be happy". People follow these rules 'cos they just don't think. They don't realise that they can be happy as something else, being what they truly want to be.

This is what Tank Girl rebels against. She lives life the way she wants.

Whoever gets in her way is going to get hurt.

Ok, what's the story behind Tank Girl?

Tank Girl was created by Jamie Hewlett and Alan Martin in 1988 as a comic to be put in Deadline magazine. Being fed up with shallow females in comics, they decided to break all the rules and have a chick that can drink, puke, and shag with the best of them.

Who are the characters in Tank Girl?

• Tank Girl Our Heroine. An Australian tank pilot turned outlaw
• Jet Girl A friend of Tank Girl since childhood. She flies a jet. Fucking hippy.
• Sub Girl Another old friend of Tank Girl. She drives a sub.
• Booga Tank Girl's significant kangaroo. Snuck into her tank one night to steal her knickers. He never left.
• Stevie Owns a convenience stores and smokes alot.
• Camp Koala TG's teddy bear
• Mr Precocious Some long snouted creature
• Barney TG's flakey friend. Tank Girl busted her out of a mental hospital. She's more or less insane.

Ok, what about the comic?

Since the start of the Tank Girl strip in Deadline, the comic has gone thru some changes. I like to divide them up into four periods. The first is the Australia years. This is the period where Tank Girl was a consistent serial and took place in Australia. During the Britain years, the strip became more surreal and those stories with an identifiable location tended to take place in the UK. The release of the movie started the Movie years. The comic just popped up all over the place, drawn and written by lots of different people. She even got mentioned on David Letterman. The comic is now in the Post-Movie years, where basically everyone's given up on it.

The Australia Years

In the beginning Tank Girl had a consistent plot....

Tank Girl is a tank pilot for an unnamed Australian military organisation. It could be the Army, maybe not, it doesn't matter. Her job is to go on random missions which range from being a bounty hunter to being a courier.

Early in the series Tank Girl is given the mission to deliver a colostomy bag to the aging Australian president with bowel troubles. While en route, she is attacked by a love crazed monster. Her delay causes the president to dump a load in his trousers at a large international trade conference. Tank Girl is immediately declared a criminal and a million dollar bounty is set on her head.

This sets the background for a more-or-less coherent series of adventures where Tank Girl and her friends live in the outback, fight ninjas, mobsters, and what not and just try to have a good time.

The Britain Years

About a year and a half or so after her creation, Tank Girl got a bit more surreal. In a guest appearance, Hewlett and Martin appear and decide to give Tank Girl a new direction, to avoid "slipping down the comics lavatory". So she drops a plan to invade Tasmania, moves up to London, and quits comics.

This is where Tank Girl stops being consistent. Stories tend not to conclude, they just stop. It's a novel approach to comic for most people who are used to the standard serial of one story blending into the next, never truly ending. This takes the "Sod that" approach. Few stories have any relation to the rest. Occasionally the strip gets rewritten in the middle. This is not for the squeamish who spend their spare time looking for consistency holes in Star Trek.

In this period there are random spin offs, with Sub Girl, Jet Girl, and Booga each getting their own occasional strip.

The Movie Years

After the movie deal was made, the comic changed again. The location moved back to Australia (usually) and became more coherent. The stories are independent, and it remains to be seen if characters killed off in one story stay dead in another. Each story, however, is at least self-consistent with no random breaks in the middle. Maybe this is to not scare off new readers, or maybe they just got bored with their last style. When Hewlett and Martin get fan mail about how much someone likes some aspect of Tank Girl, they have a habit of changing it, just 'cos they can. For example, the art changed somewhat, giving Tank Girl a new, rounder face, and Booga got a flatter, more human, face. Most people agree that this makes them look stupid.

In addition to the original comic (in Deadline), spin off Tank Girls have sprung up. The first spin off is a Hewlett and Milligan collaboration in Details. This new comic starts off with Tank Girl flying back from England to Australia, only to crashland in the US. The symbolism is so thick you could cut it with a knife. This begins the introduction of Tank Girl to mainstream America, in preparation for the upcoming movie. (Of course Tank Girl was always available, just damn near impossible to find).

DC comics released two Tank Girl series on it's Vertigo (mature) line. The first was written by Hewlett and Milligan. This was an entirely self consistent series (they had to import a writer for that) which is a parody of Homer's Odyssey and a piss-take on the Tank Girl movie and Hollywood in general. The second was by Grant, Prichett, and Bond was about the end of the world.

There is also a graphic novelisation of the movie by Peter Milligan and Andy Pritchett.

And finally there was the Tank Girl magazine which is spin off of Deadline. It reprints the Vertigo series and the Details series. There's also been new strips with either Booga solo or Tank Girl, done by Bond with either Hewlett or Martin or both.

Kind of what happens when you step on a filled doughnut, huh?

The Post-Movie Years

Well after all that it just died out. Deadline closed and went under. The Tank Girl magazine stopped at issue 8. Vertigo decided to not do a third series and stopped with the poorly received Apocalypse. The newsgroup slowed to almost a halt, only to be revived by a people talking about drinking and Kat's hair. Hewlett and Martin have not been heard from since.

About the movie

So, what's the movie about? Who's in it? What's the budget? What songs were in it? Huh? I wanna know!

Oh, sod off, ask someone else.

What's the story behind the movie?

The movie started filming on 21 June, 1994, in White Sands, New Mexico. The desert scenes were filmed there. Ten days later they moved to an abandoned mine near Tuscon, Arizona to film the rest of the movie. Filming finished in the middle of October. Post-production was scheduled for the following six weeks. Test showings occurred as early as 13 December, possibly earlier (The movie was not complete for the test showings. As is normal for these things there were blank spaces in the film where you were supposed to imagine a hideously expensive special effect). The movie was released on 31 March, 1995 in the US. In the UK it came out on 16 June. The video was released in the US Aug 24 or so.

There was a huge open audition for Tank Girl held in New York, London, and Los Angeles. They ended up using it only for a publicity stunt (parts were shown on MTV) 'cos they didn't like anyone. Apparently all the actresses were fluffy haired "My agent sent me here, what's it about?" people. All the punksters were unable to prove they could act in 30 seconds. So they cast a semi-unknown actress.

Emily Lloyd was cast to be Tank Girl, but she flaked out. Apparently there were some differences of opinion, not the least of which was she would not shave her head. You'd think that would be one of the first questions they'd have asked at the audition.

Actress number two is Lori Petty. She did a decent job, given what she had to deal with.

Similarly, Bjork was originally cast as Sub girl, but she changed her mind at the last minute. In her stead is Ann Cusack. Apparently Sub girl doesn't have a big role in the movie (not surprising since it is a world without water). Well, she never had a large role in the comic, anyway. Her only big adventures were dreaming about Booga as a messiah and discussing the Smiths. In lieu of acting Bjork did a song for the movie.

I thought they said the kangaroos were her sidekicks and the villain was the evil water and power company. I don't recall any water and power company in TG. but it sounds very familiar from another comic that ran in Deadline; anybody else know anything about this?

It's a movie. It's not the comic, there's quite alot of differences. They had to come up with a plot to make it marketable. But that didn't really work (except in Australia).

What do you mean Australia?

Apparently it was well liked there, but no where else. Go figure.

How can they (MGM-UA) get away with this?

You're kidding? How can they not? They bought the rights. Ethics or integrity in the movie business?

So, what was cut?

A whole lot. Anything that dealt with sex, drug, or expository dialogue. These are some of the changes, according to director Rachel Talalay

• Opening sequence where the comet crashes into the Earth and obliterates everything - lots of SpFx by the Skotaks . Little Rebecca in a trailer park, survives pathetically, like in Them!.
• Instead of all that lame-o voiceover which Lori and I hated at the beginning, there was a sequence at White Sands where an old lady sand hermit digs up a bottle of water, dances a little jig, then drinks it like in an orange juice commercial. then a Water and Power pilot finds she's taken water and brutally shoots her dead. He reclaims the water, but is attacked by a ripper. Tank Girl witnesses all this on her buffalo.
• Tank Girl goes home and gets stoned in her bedroom, where she goofs around with her dildo collection. She talks with Richard about how fucked up the world is.
• For some reason, they made me butcher the scene in the cold chamber/cold prison, which had a lot more funny jokes, like when Tank Girl asks Kesslee for some juice and a croissant. He shoots her up with cholera, before taking her to the pipe.
  [This scene is described on the trading card in this way, obviously the cards were made before the final cuts.]
• There was an additional scene in the cold chamber where he offers her water and she spits it in his face, which motivates him putting her in the pipe.
  [Also described on the trading card]
• In Kesslee's office, they made me use the TV version of the line "If you wanna torture, spank me, ..." The real version was "fuck me" which got changed to "lick me". Go figure.
• The dance number had three additional lyrics
  • one with Jet Girl singing, where she goes from being really shy to being really wild.
  • One with little Sam singing, which was a great intro to the scene. She ends it by grabbing the guard's guns.
  • And one with TG doing a real Sid Vicious type lyric to screaming dancer fans.
• The infamous scene with Rebecca and Booga in bed.
  [A picture of this appears in the Making of... book.]
• Sub Girl - in the original script, Sub Girl was this real mystical space-cadet friend of TG's, who said all these insane things all of which turned out to be prophetic and true. She always said she knew the Rippers, which no one believed, until TG gets desperate and asks her anyway. She also said it was gonna rain and she was building this arc to save everyone.
  When we fell behind in shooting, her character had to pick up some informational slack about where Sam was, which didn't really work for what I'd planned for her, so we ended up with that pretty awful scene in her place. But we also shot her building her arc, which turned out to be a sand-submarine. At the end of the movie, she plows through the sand and helps the girls defeat water and power and free the prisoners by blowing up W/P.
  [On the trading card Sub Girl is named Subrina and it says that she is building a submarine for when the rains come.]
• Then there was a tag where it rained and TG/Jet G/and Sub Girl plan to take over the world (the umbrella hat shot) (rather than the animation). Someone in the obnoxious focus group said they didn't understand why it rained. So out it went. We put in the animation, which I liked anyway, but first time we screened it with the animation, someone in the focus group said I wish it had rained at the end. Then everyone agreed. I hate test screenings, especially when the studio takes one person's opinion to be gospel.
• They made me add a lot of lame voiceover, which still makes me cringe. Like "You guys can't shoot" in the semi chase - which had a lot more gags with TG using her squirt gun and putting a condom on a banana before throwing it at the guard.
  And one of the stupidest line changes was in the MedBay, where now Kesslee says "You see the glass half empty, I prefer to see it half full" The original line was "Doctor, about those pain killers, maybe you should take them yourself" she says "I don't understand" and Sgt. Small shoves the saver (water-sucker) into her back.
• There were a few additional scenes with Sgt. Small where we had a really stupid running joke about him being soaked by the waterfall curtain in Kesslee's office.

In addition, more cut stuff can be found by looking in the Making of... book and the trading cards, which have pictures and descriptions of scenes cut from the film. For example, if you find out that Sam is Richard's daughter, it explains her connection to TG.

So can I ever see these cut scenes?

Yes. It's possible. An anonymous source has been kind enuf to compile a few of these cut scenes on a video tape and sell them at a nominal charge of US$10 to whoever wants it (the cost covers the cost to copy and post). All the scenes are early cuts, so the sound is bad and there are some B&W storyboard panels. It's 18 minutes long, with about 10 minutes of new footage.

The video contains:

• The pre-comet beginning (sloppy and incomplete)
• The opening desert part without the voice-over.
• The full dance number with parts by Jet Girl and Sam.
• Tank Girl and Booga in bed.
• Sub Girl at the end.
• The tag which Jamie Hewlett wrote.

If you are interesting in getting a copy, email craneisland@earthlink.net for details.

Collectibles

There is a tank Girl model. Tank Girl with a gun. I've only seen it at Forbidden Planet, but it may be available elsewhere.
There is talk about a Tank Girl doll, along the lines of Barbie. It'll never happen.

Thanks / Sources

• Michael Lee Hodge (mhodge@nmsu.edu)
• Time Out (London)
• Deadline
• Face
• Rachel Talalay
• Tom Astor
• John K. Bates (JOHN@humnet.ucla.edu)
• J. Eric Townsend (jet@abulafia.genmagic.com)
• Kurst (kurst@netnet1.netnet.net)

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For more information try the Tank Girl WWW site

http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/b.rosenberg/tg/index.html

FAQ created by Bob Rosenberg

Bob@twisted.org.uk