Now that she’s a serious actress and all, Naomi Watts may hope and pray that you don’t remember her as Lori Petty’s sidekick in Tank Girl, but I’ve always had a soft spot for the 1995 film as an unheralded masterpiece of postmodern aesthetics—then again, I was a huge fan of the Alan Martin/Jamie Hewlett comic book on which the film was based, when it was running earlier that decade. (If Hewlett’s name sounds familiar, it’s probably because he went on to even greater fame as the co-creator of Gorillaz.) Well, Martin’s ready to bring his anti-social heroine into the 21st century, and he’s tapped Australian artist Ashley Wood to draw her new adventures for IDW Publishing. “Tank Girl is a major part of my wanting to be a comic book artist,” Wood says on his blog, “so I’m super happy to be doing this with Alan.”
But when the character re-debuts in May, she’ll be making a radical break from her classic post-apocalyptic punk style. “What was alternative, upsetting, anarchic, and just plain odd-ball back then has since become common place,” Martin muses in the same blog entry. “Mainstream media smothers us daily with punky chic, and modern day babies can be seen sporting spikey hairdos and Travis Bickle T-shirts. The uniform of the cultural revolutionary has been sold to The Man. So how to rebel? How give the finger to the fashion fascists? Normal is the only way ahead.” Hence the “Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde” look in this promotional illustration. But the tanks, and the mutant kangaroos, will remain a familiar point of reference.