Tank Girl: The Movie: A Novel

Tank Girl

by Martin Millar

This is a novelization of the film "Tank Girl".

Genres: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction

192 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1996

About the author

Martin Millar is a critically acclaimed Scottish writer from Glasgow, now resident in London. He also writes the Thraxas series of fantasy novels under the pseudonym Martin Scott.

The novels he writes as Martin Millar dwell on urban decay and British sub-cultures, and the impact this has on a range of characters, both realistic and supernatural. There are elements of magical realism, and the feeling that the boundary between real life and the supernatural is not very thick. Most of them are set in Brixton, Millar's one-time place of residence. Many are at least semi-autobiographical, and Love and Peace with Melody Paradise and Suzy, Led Zeppelin and Me both feature Millar himself as a character.

As Martin Scott his Thraxas novels are a fusion of traditional high fantasy and pulp noir thrillers.

In 2000, he won the World Fantasy Award for best novel for Thraxas.

Reviews

[Dawn Quixote · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably the perfect person to write the ill-fated novelisation of the ill-fated film. Millar's realism is fantastic and his fantasy full of humdrum reality.
He was quoted as saying "it was such a lot of money for so little time" which is what most people focus on. But Millar also said he "tried to capture the spirit of Tank Girl".
I think he did, the Tank Girl of the comics is a drunken, lying, chaotic braggart who somehow floats along in life getting into (and somehow out of) ridiculously perilous situations. The film was good fun but much less grubby than source material. This novelisation heroically tries to pull the two together.
In a bar, in the outback, while biblical floods rain down, Tank Girl drunkenly tells her tale to anyone who will listen (whether they want her to or not).
I've wanted to read this for years and I don't think anyone else could have done her justice!

[Dustin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is as much a new story as it is a novelization of the movie. From the author's website he made it clear that he loves the character and the setting, but but only wrote the book because of a need to eat. The book sort of makes this clear as the framing story is a lot more fun to read and treats the story of the movie as so much bullocks Tank Girl is making up to try to win a card game. At least until the end. Mostly.

If you're a fan of Tank Girl looking for a light read I'd recommend it.