Review - Tank Girl: Skidmarks #1

Tank Girl is a long running comic series from Great Britain created by Alan Martin and Jamie Hewlett. Titan Books recently began releasing the previously released Tank Girl series in remastered collections as well as releasing newer material in serial format, such as the new miniseries, Tank Girl: Skidmarks, which they were kind enough to send over a review copy of the book a few weeks back for us to review. Hit the jump to see what I though of it.

TANK GIRL: SKIDMARKS #1

Written by Alan Martin

Art by Rufus Dayglo

The plot of the issue is a pretty simple one - Tank Girl enters a race in order to win enough money to pay for a costly brain surgery operation for her friend. While that is a fairly cliched plot, it just depends what you do with it and Martin does some entertaining things with it.

Although there isn't much to the story, it is still enjoyable at times. The issue is mostly humour driven with a little bit of plot set up for the rest of the series. The humour is decent though it is never laugh-out-loud funny. It also tends towards physical and violent humour with a juvenile feel to it that may be off putting for some people but I didn't find it too bad.

As previously mentioned, the plot is pretty thin. Aside from the race, there is not much else involved, story wise. There is a flashback that details what happened to Tank Girl's friend (the one who needs surgery) and there is someone who is trying to capture Tank Girl as well, but neither of those are particularly substantial as far as plot goes. Overall, the story is definitely light content wise even if there are some enjoyable moments along the way.

There is also not much to the characters either. You can get a sense of their personalities ,but there wasn't much to begin with, so there isn't that much to get. They also are not particularly engaging but they do help with some of the humourous aspects of the book.

The art is also lackluster. Tank Girl was originally drawn, and co-created, by Jamie Hewlett, who also co-created the band Gorillaz, and the artist, Rufus Dayglo, uses a style that is influenced by Hewlett's. This isn't a bad thing and the influence is only really noticeable with the characters. Again, it's not that this is a fault for me and I wouldn't be surprised if fans of the series like it since it might bring a sense of continuity from one series to the next. Influence aside, Dayglo's art is generally solid. His designs look good overall and he handles the comedic aspects of the story well enough. His storytelling skills is also good but, again, nothing special.

Verdict - Avoid It. Although Tank Girl: Skidmarks #1 isn't particularly bad one way or the other, but there isn't very much to commend it for either.

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