When Jamie Hewlett stopped providing the art for Tank Girl it looked like the character was finished. While Alan Martin’s scripts were certainly as equally weighted on the importance scale (see Alan Grant’s Tank Girl: Apocalypse for evidence of that), without Hewlett much of the character’s flair and exuberance was lost.
However, it looks like some of the spark is back. Rufus Dayglo is clearly from the Hewlett school of art. If you picked this up off the shelf and flicked through it, you could be forgiven for thinking for presuming, at least on first inspection, that it was a Hewlett-illustrated book. Dayglo does a superb imitation, adding little originality to the style but creating a Hewlett homage that’s so accurate, you’d question whether Hewlett might have a case for stolen identity.
This old-school feel to the art has clearly drawn more from Alan Martin too. While Tank Girl spent a few years in the doldrums, struggling to feel as fresh and anarchic as it did twenty years ago, there’s at least some of the old magic here. Bad Wind Rising is more of a back-to-basics romp, which sees Tank Girl and Booga argue and fall out, alongside a fast-moving sub-plot of mad scientists, kangaroo gangs, tanks and heists.
While Hewlett and Martin’s originals are still the best place to start, this should satisfy an old fan looking for a little nostalgia. It’s not perfect, but it feels like a step in the right direction.
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