Way back in 1988, comic artist Jamie Hewlett and writer Alan Martin created Tank Girl—a female character with a snarl, wit, and attitude who seemed to perfectly represent the vibe of a youth culture that was tired of batting back the same-old platitudes and prejudices faced by kids in the 1970s, 1960s, ’50s, and so on.
So, why did he decide to revisit her with an open edition print for Tank Girl, priced at £100 in 2024? “When I first drew the Tank Girl strips, there were a couple of months where all the style press was talking about this new character – ‘Tank Girl by Jamie Hewlett, and it’s really cool’,” says Jamie. “I think I’m much better at drawing today than I was back then, so I thought, maybe I can right a few wrongs – things I wasn’t happy with when I look back on those early comic strips. It was just nice to have an opportunity to spend time with her again, really.”
Tank Girl rocked the world of comics and arrived at a time when British comic artists and writers were making a bigger impact globally than ever before. Names like Alan Moore, Brian Bolland, Grant Morrison, and Garth Ennis were among them. Even so, we weren’t seeing female characters who were quite as kick-ass as she was.
“It was at that time – early ’90s – there were attempts to have this big comics renaissance in England because there were a lot of adult titles at the time, and we never really had a comics industry in England,” says Jamie. “Although we’ve had some of the best writers and artists ever in the history of comics, they’d all gone over to America. So, there was a moment in the early ’90s when they really wanted to celebrate English comics. You know, we’re like Japan, we’re like Europe, we’re like America. Magazines were doing pieces about all the new comics that were coming out, and i-D Magazine did something about Tank Girl.”
With the style press taking an interest and Tank Girl celebrated in the indie-minded counterculture throughout the decade, the character’s impact spread beyond the pages of comics and magazines, inspiring the LGBTQ+ community and political activists. Tank Girl seemed unstoppable, and other artists took up the challenge of drawing her. In 1995, she hit the silver screen—though perhaps the film missed the original tone of the comics.
“People connected with her from the very beginning,” says Jamie. “There was probably a period of about three or four years around that time in England that being a comic artist was really cool. It was like being in a band or being a fashion designer or an actor, and for the first time, it felt like being taken seriously, and I just happened to arrive at that moment. It was definitely a very unexpected and thrilling time for me as a young artist. She’s been a part of my life ever since.”
In 2023,