WRITER: ALAN MARTIN | ARTIST: BRETT PARSON | PUBLISHER: TITAN | FORMAT: TRADE PAPERBACK | RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW (DIGITAL), MAY 20TH (PRINT)

Tank Girl has always been deeply silly, rude and utterly different. It’s had a typically British approach to the concept of canon, by which we mean it’s one of those things that’s quite happy to dump decades of backstory if it reckons it can get a good gag out of it. It’s also been proudly off-the-beaten-path. No one could ever describe the book as mainstream.

Tank Girl Forever finally does the unthinkable by making Tank Girl a super-hero. She has a suit of armour that gives her tank themed powers. Her friends Jet Girl and Sub Girl have similar air and sea-themed kit and together they form a superhero team. Only not really. It’s actually some sort of weird event triggered by some random Deus Ex Machina that Tank Girl and friends have decided to mess with because they’re idiots.

So we get Barney as a goth-style villain, a sesame seed shaped meteor coming to destroy Melbourne and Booga heroically talking gibberish. We also get Tank Girl herself making fun of multiple comic book tropes, while dressed in a variety of silly costumes. Though it doesn’t quite dip into out-right satire, it does come close enough to be fun.

Brett Parson does a fantastic job with the art. The art flexes between the traditionally over-detailed Tank Girl style nonsense to a more familiar ‘super-hero’ approach as the story demands. Parson tackles this admirably, even in the more ridiculous ‘60s-style Marvel moments the characters still remain visibly Tank Girl. Seems you can put a girl in tank-inspired Iron Man armour and keep the same punk style that makes the book so special. Parsons captures the character designs perfectly and doesn’t try to mimic the approach of previous artists. Instead, we get something unique but also fun.

Alas, the story isn’t capable of maintaining a constant stream of silliness. At some point, it goes completely off the rails into dark creepiness. Ironically there’s too much plot and set-up throughout this, and it does feel like we’ve come into the middle of the story throughout the book. This isn’t too uncommon for Tank Girl, but the central gag gets lost in the mix and the whole thing gradually runs out of steam. The art is gorgeous and the jokes are as funny as they were back in the ‘90s, but it’s just a little too dark to be as fun as it should be.