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Tank Girl #4
Tank Girl: The Odyssey
A twisted take on Homer's The Odyssey. Booga, husband of Tank Girl, is being wooed by Hollywood producers, and without his wife there his resolve is crumbling. Tele, their TV-headed son, knows that he must contact his mother...setting off a chain of events that will see Tank Girl face death itsel
104 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 2003
About the author
Peter Milligan
1,485 books364 followersLibrarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
Peter Milligan is a British writer, best known for his work on X-Force / X-Statix, the X-Men, & the Vertigo series Human Target. He is also a scriptwriter.
He has been writing comics for some time and he has somewhat of a reputation for writing material that is highly outlandish, bizarre and/or absurd.
His highest profile projects to date include a run on X-Men, and his X-Force revamp that relaunched as X-Statix.
Many of Milligan's best works have been from DC Vertigo. These include: The Extremist (4 issues with artist Ted McKeever) The Minx (8 issues with artist Sean Phillips) Face (Prestige one-shot with artist Duncan Fegredo) The Eaters (Prestige one-shot with artist Dean Ormston) Vertigo Pop London (4 issues with artist Philip Bond) Enigma (8 issues with artist Duncan Fegredo) and Girl (3 issues with artist Duncan Fegredo).
Series:
* Human Target
* Greek Street
* X-Force / X-Statix
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
Peter Milligan is a British writer, best known for his work on X-Force / X-Statix, the X-Men, & the Vertigo series Human Target. He is also a scriptwriter.
He has been writing comics for some time and he has somewhat of a reputation for writing material that is highly outlandish, bizarre and/or absurd.
His highest profile projects to date include a run on X-Men, and his X-Force revamp that relaunched as X-Statix.
Many of Milligan's best works have been from DC Vertigo. These include: The Extremist (4 issues with artist Ted McKeever) The Minx (8 issues with artist Sean Phillips) Face (Prestige one-shot with artist Duncan Fegredo) The Eaters (Prestige one-shot with artist Dean Ormston) Vertigo Pop London (4 issues with artist Philip Bond) Enigma (8 issues with artist Duncan Fegredo) and Girl (3 issues with artist Duncan Fegredo).
Series:
* Human Target
* Greek Street
* X-Force / X-Statix
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 39 reviews
June 21, 2012
If I'm forced to read aloud every line to whomever is around to hear, and even recount some of the events like a 10-year-old because they're so clever and funny, then I guess it wins.
November 13, 2014
I enjoyed Tank Girl: The Odyssey immensely. That's all I can really say for certain of this very weird, very fragmented, comic reading... experience. It is an experience. A ride. A journey. An odyssey!
If I had to pin down a core, recurring element of this wildly fluctuating spectacle of a book, it would probably be mania. Sheer, undisturbed, persistent mania. The book runs on pure energy, and doesn't skip a single beat in churning out joke after joke, gag after gag, scene after scene. The pacing is wild, the dialog skirts from being intensely sophomoric to providing high-brow, classical literature reference and observation at the drop of a hat, and the art, in Jamie Hewlett's recognizable, chunky, pop/punk style, is positively electric. If there's one thing Tank Girl has, it is, surprisingly, variety - though that variety all combines into a singular, very silly, very immature goal that ultimately comes off as far less ingenious than it perhaps actually is.
It's a very particular 90s brand of juvenile hi-jinks - creative violence and swearing, along with cheeky parody, self-deprecation and allusions to popular culture, are combined with nudity, gross-out humour, farts, sex, and stinky, feces-smothered toilet humour, to creative a melting pot of everything society has ever looked down upon in comic books. It's all presented through the eyes of Tank Girl, a character I still, after reading quite a fair chunk of, can't pin down. She's either a punk feminist icon and hero, representing anarchy and sincere, shameless childishness... or, she's a cruel, self-serving parody of punk feminist icons and heroes, representing anarchy and shameless childishness by way of subtle, scornful, misogynistic mockery. I really have no idea. Her lack of respect for the core tenants of human interaction and society's rules of engagement are either to point out how cool that is (and it does look pretty cool), or to highlight how uncool it is (it also comes across as pretty dorky). To be honest, personally, while I hope she's a sincere attempt at progressiveness in female representation at this point, I think she could easily be the opposite. That would upset me deeply. Perhaps I'm employing a tad bit of wishful thinking.
Ah, but is not pop culture what we make of it? And as Tank Girl has been wholly embraced by women the world over as a no-nonsense action heroine who follows her own destructive path, so too has The Odyssey. Tank Girl does what she wants, often at the risk of others - her stable of friends, Sub Girl, Jet Girl, and Barney, and a band of new followers, including a girl who is a sincere fan of her work, and three Irishmen who are not-so-vague and ever-so-unflattering caricatures of the three key creators of the book. They all have times to shine (her new followers, times to die horrifically at the hands of disturbing evils), and they lend a unique voice to the book that I find quite appealing. There's a dry wit to many of the jokes, with obvious gags often pointed out and derided within the gag itself; and the actual encounters the Tank Girl crew face are all so deliciously warped that they play out as a kind of vicious self-parody, so there's never really any legitimate tension - just guffaws-a-plenty, and a bit of action/adventure.
The plot. Oh. For what it's worth, The Odyssey is a loose adaption of Homer's Odyssey (though, by admission of Peter Milligan, more closely mirroring Ulysses). Tank Girl needs to stop her kangaroo boyfriend, Booga, from signing a movie contract that would see him... well, I'm not sure. It's kept pretty vague as to why Booga signing a movie deal contract is in any way a negative thing. Tank Girl herself is fresh off of the "success" of her movie (yes, that movie), but she's in Ireland, and Booga is in Australia. So she rounds up her hearty crew and sets off for Australia. On the way they encounter danger and panic and shenanigans, from a pack of ravenous (and cannibalistic) film producers, to Tank Girl's dead mother who becomes very angry when Tank Girl fails to revive her corpse with magic farts, to their own selfish greed, to a hotel full of overbearing, religious zealot cyclops'. Who run a hotel. Called Cyclops Hotel.
Those who recognize Homer's Odyssey will notice not just how similar Tank Girl: The Odyssey is (and pick up on the not-so-subtle analogs), but how strongly it insists on deviating from it, as well. Things just happen in Tank Girl, and The Odyssey is no difference. The jokes range from very clever, to very stupid, to clever in their outright stupidity (one cliffhanger ending sees Tank Girl stuck between saving her and her friends from certain death, or leaving a movie theater before the film is over, thus emitting a grievous social faux pas), and for every earned literary reference and ingenious little observation, there are twice as many dumps of utter inanity, designed seemingly to trip up the story from progressing, and confuse the entire flow of pacing. It's bizarre. Really bizarre.
Obviously I enjoy Tank Girl: The Odyssey, or I would never have told you so in the opening sentence. As to why I enjoy it - or if I even should enjoy it - I really can't say. It does suit my bias towards clever approaches to stupid subject matters, it fulfills my daily quota of badass, anarchic women in comics, and it's so fast-paced and full of junk that there's never really a chance to reflect on whether or not the joke you just laughed at was worthy of a chuckle, or if it simply caught you off-guard in the searing sandstorm of lunacy.
Either way, this is pure, unmitigated Tank Girl from start to finish, and if you don't know by now, you either love 'er or hate 'er. It seems I love 'er. Maybe it's because I'm Australian, and Tank Girl seems to embrace the best and worst of our deeply disturbed national attitude towards life ("I'm in hell!" Jet Girl protests, and, after Tank Girl explains they're merely on their way to Australia, she interjects, "there's a difference?") Or maybe it's just because of its unbridled commitment to reveling in its own ostentatious and joyfully idiotic filth. Either way, I love it - and I sincerely hope you can too.
If I had to pin down a core, recurring element of this wildly fluctuating spectacle of a book, it would probably be mania. Sheer, undisturbed, persistent mania. The book runs on pure energy, and doesn't skip a single beat in churning out joke after joke, gag after gag, scene after scene. The pacing is wild, the dialog skirts from being intensely sophomoric to providing high-brow, classical literature reference and observation at the drop of a hat, and the art, in Jamie Hewlett's recognizable, chunky, pop/punk style, is positively electric. If there's one thing Tank Girl has, it is, surprisingly, variety - though that variety all combines into a singular, very silly, very immature goal that ultimately comes off as far less ingenious than it perhaps actually is.
It's a very particular 90s brand of juvenile hi-jinks - creative violence and swearing, along with cheeky parody, self-deprecation and allusions to popular culture, are combined with nudity, gross-out humour, farts, sex, and stinky, feces-smothered toilet humour, to creative a melting pot of everything society has ever looked down upon in comic books. It's all presented through the eyes of Tank Girl, a character I still, after reading quite a fair chunk of, can't pin down. She's either a punk feminist icon and hero, representing anarchy and sincere, shameless childishness... or, she's a cruel, self-serving parody of punk feminist icons and heroes, representing anarchy and shameless childishness by way of subtle, scornful, misogynistic mockery. I really have no idea. Her lack of respect for the core tenants of human interaction and society's rules of engagement are either to point out how cool that is (and it does look pretty cool), or to highlight how uncool it is (it also comes across as pretty dorky). To be honest, personally, while I hope she's a sincere attempt at progressiveness in female representation at this point, I think she could easily be the opposite. That would upset me deeply. Perhaps I'm employing a tad bit of wishful thinking.
Ah, but is not pop culture what we make of it? And as Tank Girl has been wholly embraced by women the world over as a no-nonsense action heroine who follows her own destructive path, so too has The Odyssey. Tank Girl does what she wants, often at the risk of others - her stable of friends, Sub Girl, Jet Girl, and Barney, and a band of new followers, including a girl who is a sincere fan of her work, and three Irishmen who are not-so-vague and ever-so-unflattering caricatures of the three key creators of the book. They all have times to shine (her new followers, times to die horrifically at the hands of disturbing evils), and they lend a unique voice to the book that I find quite appealing. There's a dry wit to many of the jokes, with obvious gags often pointed out and derided within the gag itself; and the actual encounters the Tank Girl crew face are all so deliciously warped that they play out as a kind of vicious self-parody, so there's never really any legitimate tension - just guffaws-a-plenty, and a bit of action/adventure.
The plot. Oh. For what it's worth, The Odyssey is a loose adaption of Homer's Odyssey (though, by admission of Peter Milligan, more closely mirroring Ulysses). Tank Girl needs to stop her kangaroo boyfriend, Booga, from signing a movie contract that would see him... well, I'm not sure. It's kept pretty vague as to why Booga signing a movie deal contract is in any way a negative thing. Tank Girl herself is fresh off of the "success" of her movie (yes, that movie), but she's in Ireland, and Booga is in Australia. So she rounds up her hearty crew and sets off for Australia. On the way they encounter danger and panic and shenanigans, from a pack of ravenous (and cannibalistic) film producers, to Tank Girl's dead mother who becomes very angry when Tank Girl fails to revive her corpse with magic farts, to their own selfish greed, to a hotel full of overbearing, religious zealot cyclops'. Who run a hotel. Called Cyclops Hotel.
Those who recognize Homer's Odyssey will notice not just how similar Tank Girl: The Odyssey is (and pick up on the not-so-subtle analogs), but how strongly it insists on deviating from it, as well. Things just happen in Tank Girl, and The Odyssey is no difference. The jokes range from very clever, to very stupid, to clever in their outright stupidity (one cliffhanger ending sees Tank Girl stuck between saving her and her friends from certain death, or leaving a movie theater before the film is over, thus emitting a grievous social faux pas), and for every earned literary reference and ingenious little observation, there are twice as many dumps of utter inanity, designed seemingly to trip up the story from progressing, and confuse the entire flow of pacing. It's bizarre. Really bizarre.
Obviously I enjoy Tank Girl: The Odyssey, or I would never have told you so in the opening sentence. As to why I enjoy it - or if I even should enjoy it - I really can't say. It does suit my bias towards clever approaches to stupid subject matters, it fulfills my daily quota of badass, anarchic women in comics, and it's so fast-paced and full of junk that there's never really a chance to reflect on whether or not the joke you just laughed at was worthy of a chuckle, or if it simply caught you off-guard in the searing sandstorm of lunacy.
Either way, this is pure, unmitigated Tank Girl from start to finish, and if you don't know by now, you either love 'er or hate 'er. It seems I love 'er. Maybe it's because I'm Australian, and Tank Girl seems to embrace the best and worst of our deeply disturbed national attitude towards life ("I'm in hell!" Jet Girl protests, and, after Tank Girl explains they're merely on their way to Australia, she interjects, "there's a difference?") Or maybe it's just because of its unbridled commitment to reveling in its own ostentatious and joyfully idiotic filth. Either way, I love it - and I sincerely hope you can too.
June 25, 2017
I loved this one. This book is a perfect combination of intellect and shite, and I mean that in a positive way. This book is not for the faint hearted. This book is vulgar, but delicious. There are a ton of literary references in this book, not only to the oddysea, but also for example the rime of the ancient mariner, and other classics. This book is for everyone who likes to read something smart, but also likes to go on a trashy ride once in a while, because those two do not exclude each other.
March 5, 2019
Edición inglesa con este mismo ISBN pero con otra tapa (está Tank Girl de frente, disfrazada de canguro y con un peluche violeta). Vendría a ser el cuarto tomo de la edición remasterizada de Titan, que viene después de la trilogía original (publicada en Argentina por Utopía).
October 26, 2010
I think my title sums up my thoughts on this latest outing for TG and the gang. Riffing off Ulysses and every other rendition of Homer's Odyssey the writers could think of, TG: Odyssey sees the usually jumbled and non-linear TG take a direct, structured approach for once. At first I worried there might be a loss of energy as a direct result of losing the freeform style of the original strips, and of course this is a graphic novel rather than a collection of serial strips so the energy *has* to be different, but the anarchic wit and ambience survives the transformation. Indeed, I might even venture to say this is one of the best outings for TG I've read. Whilst the plot is structured, that isn't normally a problem in any kind of novel, and the writers have concocted enough twists and turns in the story that it doesn't feel the TG crew have sold out. Indeed, it's deceptively elegant, because it still feels anarchic, it's just that now we can follow a linear plot too, which makes the whole thing easier to engage with and enjoy. TG still rules, and she's keeping with the times!
February 2, 2015
Mmmmeh. This is my second Tank Girl, and I came away feeling much the same: whatever. It looks great on (figurative) paper: 1990s, Australian riot grrrl, influenced in equal parts by Mad Max and gutter punk (or maybe I mean crustie) aesthetics. Yo, I'm down with all of this in theory. I'm also down with clever classical references to Odysseus et al. - which this book has loads of - and with smug/clever fourth-wall breaking. But, in practice, actually reading it, I was just like... meh.
One good thing: it did spur me to re-Google this old doc about 13 year old riot grrrls in California. Amazing!
One good thing: it did spur me to re-Google this old doc about 13 year old riot grrrls in California. Amazing!
March 24, 2007
there is just something rascally about her.
the problem is everytime I read it I want to shave my head and do graffitti.
Two things i've really had to cut down on since moving to boston,
the problem is everytime I read it I want to shave my head and do graffitti.
Two things i've really had to cut down on since moving to boston,
January 28, 2011
Best graphic novel I've ever read!
September 11, 2020
This is one of the better Tank Girl outings, IMO. You got the classic Hewlett art, plus you got Milligan doing a Homer/Joyce mashup. It all melts together deliciously into a weird, funky goo-ball.
October 21, 2019
No sé si es que los cómics anteriores que leí me pillaron joven, si ya no me parece tan novedoso, si el cambio de guionista se nota o si el rollito de provocar por provocar cada vez me da más dentera, pero no me ha maravillado mucho. Sigue teniendo puntazos y la estética de Hewlett me encanta, pero no ha sido increíble. Igual el que uno de los arcos sean cómo Tank Girl se revive a sí misma y a sus colegas con pedos tiene algo que ver.
August 19, 2019
Not sure about this one. It's somewhere between badly pretentious and wonderfully juvenile, throwaway and milestone, funny and seen-it-before. I think if I had read it a decade ago I'd think more highly of it, but looking at it now it really just helps fill a knowledge gap.
April 18, 2022
I enjoy this Tank Girl take on Homer's Odyssey/Joyce's Ulysses. It's just as random and off the wall as Hewlett and Martin's original strips, but it's an uncharacteristically cohesive narrative with some character development.
June 23, 2019
Finally a readable Tank Girl graphic.
March 11, 2021
My favourite Tank Girl comic by far
May 25, 2021
tank girl is my girlllll, I love her in every story and this one was no exception. Top notch read, and a must for post apoc/ apoc appreciators.
February 5, 2015
Contaré este compilatorio como otro material literario, el guión es digno de elogio y mucho mejor que la mierda "literaria" que esta abordando el mercado actual de bestsellers.
Además del guión, los trazos de Hewlett son otro mundo, uno muybde acuerdo a la historia y los personajes.
En especial, The Odyssey es la mejor y grandilocuente de Tank Girl.
Y para rematar, el grueso de la novela es un tanto extenso, entonces, sí.
La considero como uno más de mis libros favoritos.
Además del guión, los trazos de Hewlett son otro mundo, uno muybde acuerdo a la historia y los personajes.
En especial, The Odyssey es la mejor y grandilocuente de Tank Girl.
Y para rematar, el grueso de la novela es un tanto extenso, entonces, sí.
La considero como uno más de mis libros favoritos.
May 10, 2014
Cuatro años después de haberlo marcado, finalmente puedo leer este clásico moderno de Milligan y Hewlett, esta oda a las odas, esta orgía de vanidades, este cacholibro que derrocha glamurrrrrrr en cuatricomía. Y la verdad que está muy bien, pero me hizo reír menos veces de las que esperaba. Aun así, sigue siendo lo mejor de lo (poco) que leí de Chica Tanque.
July 14, 2007
Tank Girl and the end-of-the-world, what could be better?
December 9, 2008
Pretty fun stuff.
January 28, 2009
Always a good read. Albeit Alan Martin not being on board (how tragic), I feel this one outshone some of the over books in sheer Tank Girl awesomeness.
October 5, 2009
LOVE the art. Love the whole book. Must read more!
June 9, 2013
The first reeeaaally long form comic that is mostly coherent and simultaneously Hewlett's farewell. Still holds up after all these years.
July 12, 2011
Oh dear, think I'm a graphic novel convert...now there really isn't enough time in the world to read all the books I want to read.
February 16, 2013
1980 후반 영국에서 출판된 고전 만화, 탱크를 모는 적극적인 여성상과 순화된 페미니즘 사상을 엿보다.
January 22, 2013
It was definitely this one that I read, I remember now. Since it was for a class about Odysseys. Got it!
July 24, 2013
One of the best short comic stories I've read. Milligan is really playful with the different versions of the Odyssey and Hewlett's artwork is absolute madness. Wonderful book.
July 31, 2013
Love 'em! Will have to re-read them again!
August 10, 2013
This was expertly crafted, but the nihilism was a bit much for me, as is occasionally the case for me with Milligan's work. Certainly worth a look!
Want to read
April 18, 2016Edición española de Tank Girl: The Odyssey.
September 12, 2014
Pa los que quieran llévarselo firmado por Peter, ¡apúrense que las Odiseas vuelan!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 39 reviews