Everybody Loves Tank Girl, by Jim Mahfood and Alan C. Martin, is a beautiful chaotic mess of swearing, bodily fluids, and uncensored carnage. The latest installment in the Tank Girl canon (pun absolutely intended) is glorious in its unfiltered destructive zeal. The stories are frenetic and unfocused at times, the social commentary isn’t exactly subtle, and the jokes are non-stop. And this is what makes it so enjoyable. The art is rambunctious, overwhelming, provocative, chaotic, hopped-up-on-too-many-illicit-drugs, and intoxicating: just like Tank Girl herself.
Everybody Loves Tank Girl pays absolutely no heed to traditional narrative expectations. And rather than pander to accepted modes of story-telling, Mahfood and Martin opt instead to do the exact opposite: violate those trusted modes in a glorious manner akin to sacrilege. For example, in Part Three of the main narrative “Everybody Loves Tank Girl,” Mahfood interrupts the traditional story-telling rule of not murdering young children (because well, do I really have to explain why?) by using the single most rejected and hated plot device of them all: the dream device, saying it was all an illusion and didn’t really happen anyways. And this is the brilliance that is Tank Girl. She isn’t just an in-your-face character. She’s an in-your-face character who is refuting accepted norms on the ground that they are baseless anyways. The very narrative structure itself defies audience expectations and standards in a manner akin to flipping them the bird.
This is the consistent theme throughout all of the mini-stories contained inside Everybody Loves Tank Girl: an in-your-face rejection of traditional tropes and stereotypes. The collection begins with TG and Booga offering open-arms to those who are sick of the redundancy and mindlessness of modern life. Tank Girl is offering herself as the antidote for everyone who hates how mainstream society functions. Did you hate Toddlers and Tiaras and the fact that our culture let this show happen? Then Tank Girl is for you! TG is blatantly disregarding any norms and opting for her own variety of fun. She is an outlaw in every sense of the word: not only has society cast her off, she has cast off normative society, as well.
The first mini-story begins with Tank Girl showing off her newly renovated abode and insulting Justin Boobie (an obnoxious young male “musical” celebrity that possesses absolutely zero resemblance to any existing obnoxious young male “musical” celebrity in contemporary society, of course). This establishes Tank Girl as fiercely counter-culture. Her tour through her home-sweet-tank parallels the stereotypical housewife guiding a proud tour of her house, while her rejection of Justin Boobie manifests Tank Girl as vocally against the majority. These are both lives that Tank Girl is refuting as mind-numbing, since the collection begins with a note from her instructing us that she is a “soothing balm for weary souls.” It’s not to insult the masses (or maybe it is), but the point is clear: don’t blindly follow popular culture. Because then you’re part of the problem TG is trying to fix – by extreme explosions and violence.
Tank Girl continues on in this parodic vein, as well. Later in the collection, we are given “The Tank Girl Guide: How To Dress Quite Good,” a patented TG lesson on how she dresses up for a special night out with Booga. It begins with an extremely provocative pose of her full body in only a bra and panties, which is set against her discussion of why she doesn’t think concerning herself with clean underwear is such a problem by making reference to her own “odd skidmark” and “wee wee stain.” Her body is offered as sexualized, at the same time that a reference is made to bodily functions that have been typically disassociated from the female body. The female body has been typically presented only to be looked at (according to Laura Mulvey’s discussion of the female body in visual culture), and we’re not meant to think of it as containing organs that excrete waste. It’s a great moment, because it’s effectively saying that you can’t have it both ways. If female bodies are going to be sexualized, you better take into account everything that comes from having a living body, as well. If that doesn’t get the message across, at the end of TG’s guide on dressing up for a smoking hot date, there’s a panel of her cramming her face with food in the most unladylike fashion possible. And know what? She looks good while doing so.
Tank Girl herself isn’t exempt from this claw at society. In “Tank Girl 2: The Motion Picture,” Mahfood and Martin have Tank Girl, Booga, and Barney reclaim the right to their identities and embark on restoring the loss of credibility they garnered through the original unsuccessful Tank Girl movie. While the characters lambaste what an awful mess the movie made of their lives, they set about filming a new movie — that falls victim to the sae errors as the original movie. Barney explains to TG that screwing up adaptations is the modern way, and despite vocalizing her concerns, TG trusts the project to her friend and immediately proceeds to film a topless shot (that’s the Hollywood way!) Unsuccessful, they return to their lives exactly as they were before the whole movie debacle, this time having taken down Hollywood’s attempt to capitalize on a character who refuses to be anything that Hollywood would actually want.
Sometimes Everybody Loves Tank Girl isn’t taking jabs at society because it’s having too much fun swearing non-stop and making fart jokes. For every potential social critique, there’s another mini-story doing nothing but laughing at it’s own jokes. And this is all part of the enjoyment of Tank Girl: we follow her exactly where she takes us, whether it is to a place where we can critique the injustices of the world or to a spelling bee for swearing.
Everybody Loves Tank Girl is fun exploitation-style narrative, comical, and way too assured in itself to care at all what anyone thinks of it. And this is why we do all, in fact, love Tank Girl. It’s political if you want it to be, but Tank Girl, Booga, and Barney are here for a good time, and their anarchic, irreverent humour and hijinks fits perfectly into counter-culture chaos. And that being said, it’s now time to go fill the bathtub with vodka.
