By: Alan C. Martin (writer) & Jim Mahfood (artist)
The Story: A series of Tank Girl short stories.
Quick Review: “Story” isn’t really the point with Tank Girl. Here we just get to see the titular protagonist going through a series of short stories. Each is 3-5 pages long in classic Tank Girl style: foul-mouthed, irreverent and funny as hell if you have a coarse, black sense of humor. If you’re a Tank Girl fan, you’ll probably be pleased. If you’ve never read Tank Girl before, you can hop right into this and know what’s going on. Or put another way…..this isn’t like jumping into middle of Hellboy where you’ll be confused if you haven’t read from the beginning. It’s well worth every comic fan giving a character like this a shot.
What sets this issue apart is the art of Jim Mahfood. The guy is just electric. If you don’t read anything outside of Marvel/DC, his style is going to be a bit of a shock. Heck, even if you read some of the more adventurous stuff at Image, his work will be a bit of a shock. I always want to say there is a graffiti influence to Mahfood’s art. I dunno why I think that….maybe it’s just that I look at his art and KNOW that’d he could do some marvelous things if you gave him a bunch of spray cans and a large, flat surface. He’s really not a traditional comic artist at all…..but we love it when he stops doing his other projects to drop a few issues on us.
I guess for a “mainstream” comparison, I’d say that Mahfood is like a messy version of Sean Murphy (understanding, of course, that Mahfood’s been around for a lot longer). His characters are all cartoony and expressive. He never seems to worry about whether he’s drawing a finger too long or a set of shoulders too narrow. He just goes with it and makes it work. I’d love to see him draw and see if he just slings this ink down on the page or whether he fusses and frets to make it look this way. I probably wouldn’t be surprised either way.
Mahfood even plays around with his style within this issue. Some are just kinda okay (The Lie of the Deviled Cock), but some stories also show off his talent as a colorist such as outstanding “Automatic, Psychadelic Hand-Grenade Shit-Storm” where Tank Girl and her boyfriend drop acid before attacking the bad guys and when they chop off heads or arms, a riot of flowers and butterflies erupt from the wounds instead of blood.
Conclusion: Buy it. It’s $3.99 and even if you don’t love it….you can say your horizons were broadened.
Grade: B+
– Dean Stell
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Conclusion