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Comic Book Review


Book Cover

Tank Girl
World War Tank Girl #3

 

Writer: Alan Martin
Artist: Brett Parson
Publisher: Titan Comics
RRP: UK £2.65, US $3.99, Cdn $4.99
Age: Mature readers
32 pages
Publication Date: 21 June 2017


For reasons that may (or may not) become clear later on, we have found ourselves thrown back in time to World War Two. My marsupial boyfriend Booga is nowhere to be found, and Sub Girl (our reason for travelling back in the first place) has gone AWOL in a Meteor jet fighter…”

The Titan Comics website describes the genre of this comic book as: “Action/Adventure / Comedy / Girl Power”. The latter category has never been truer than in this episode, in which Tank Girl is disheartened to find that the US Army has a load of shiny, brand-new tanks in the field, but no one to crew them. The troops are down to fewer than a dozen men. “But on the bright side,” says one optimistic female engineer, “we’re sorted if anything breaks down or anyone gets hurt – we’ve got eighty Women’s Army Corps mechanics, and a hundred and fifty nurses!” Tank Girl’s modern mentality sees the obvious solution when the 1940s personnel do not – she crews the tanks with women, taking the Germans well and truly by surprise! “Huh?!” says one confused Nazi soldier, “It is girls in tanks! Girls in tanks!”

Meanwhile, we learn more about Sub Girl’s double life as the Hollywood actress Gloria Swanage. I had assumed that the two women were one and the same, with Swanage being an identity taken on by Sub Girl while in the past – making her trip back in time a causal loop, as she was already aware of Swanage’s fame. However, it turns out that the actress exists in her own right. Sub Girl is her spitting image, and stands in for her when Swanage is taken ill.

If I have a criticism of this issue, it is that the inclusion of a cut-out Tank Girl mask and a double-sided poster (showing the A and B cover designs by Brett Parson and Chris Wahl respectively) mean there are only 19 pages of actual comic strip this time, which is something of a shortcoming.

What we are not short of, however, is Martin and Parson’s seemingly inexhaustible supply of comedy sound effects and exclamations, which this month include “Grint!”, “Gnu!”, “Stuff!”, “Titten!” and “Butter! Butter!” So all in all, it’s another successful mission from Titten – sorry, Titan – Comics.

8

Richard McGinlay

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