Rufus Dayglo: Tank Girl

I'm sticking to this plan. I see no reason to change it now.

Like a lot of people in the UK, I grew up reading the War Digest books, so I grew up watching Germans getting blown to pieces and thinking that was the best possible thing to do with your time. I was in love with war comics, and was fairly obsessed with them. As a child, I was happily waiting for World War III to start because then I thought I could do new comics about that.

Then my dad bought me 2000 A.D., which had Judge Dredd in it, and also had a fantastic strip about dinosaurs called Flesh. It was about some futuristic cowboys that go back in time to harvest dinosaurs as cattle and the dinosaurs turn against them and eat them all. Needless to say, as a 5 or 6-year old, that's the best possible thing, to see a tyrannosaurus rex rip off the head of a futuristic cowboy. Basically, anything with a lot of blood in it - and guns - I was fairly keen on...I started from a very early age drawing my own comics. I used to draw these war strips where I would turn all my friends into soldiers and then kill them one by one.

Exactly, those were the people I liked. I think that explains why I went on to live alone with a cat. So, that's where I started with comics.

None really. Both my mom and dad were quite artsy people. My dad worked in advertising when I was a little kid. He was away a lot, so when he used to come back he used to pin drawings of tanks and jeeps and airplanes to my door. I was very lucky, my parents encouraged me to draw. Most of the artists I know, they tell me these horror stories about how their parents would beat them with sticks and send up chimneys and things because they didn't want them to draw. Whereas my parents were pretty much "as long as you're happy, go for it."

I didn't really pay a hell of a lot of attention at school, I just sat there drawing. I think the best training in art is just to do it. It's about practice, the more you draw, the better you get...I think the problem is when most people pick up a pencil and draw something, they don't like the results and they give up. Whereas if you're a particularly stupid person, you just keep going and you end up sticking with it because you can't think of anything else to do. I think that's what happened to me. Just out of my own sheer stupidity I kept drawing. I just loved drawing explosions, and out of sheer tenacity and the will to marry Princess Leia, I was determined to carry on down this path.

As a teenager, I got into Tank Girl when Jamie and Alan started Deadline. I absolutely fell in love with it. I was a little punk rocker. I wore bondage trousers and had spiky hair, and generally looked a mess. All the girls I liked looked like Tank Girl, so it completely fed into my group of friends really. I was in the right time and place, and it just completely clicked. For me, drawing Tank Girl now, it's largely based on a couple of friends of mine, one of whom is one of my neighbors, a girl called Sophie. A lot of the clothes that I draw on her are either stuff that I own or Sophie owns, which obviously says a lot about my wardrobe because I dress up in a lot of old World War II stuff.

Well, yeah, I don't like to talk about that! [laughs] That's Sophie's end of things, but make of that what you will. I'll try not to deny anything too strenuously because otherwise it'll just be like a red flag to a bull.

I just basically base it on all the people that I like. I suppose it's a love letter to the people I like and admire, some of whom I fancy. I think if you're drawing something that you love, other people will love it too. If I didn't like what I was drawing, it would show pretty quickly. When you look at some artwork, I can tell if the person struggled through it and didn't enjoy it very much. A lot of the stuff I draw is quite scrappy, but because I'm having fun while I'm drawing it - it kind of carries it through and retains that balance of fun.

In the same way that punk music might not be the most accomplished music in the world, but you can tell when people are actually having fun when they're doing it...You'll put something on and you can just tell someone really loves what they're doing. I can think of bands - even Riot Grrl bands like Bikini Kill - not the most accomplished bands in the world, but if you ever saw them or you've ever heard them, it's like someone's happily chainsawing through your head. We want it to be the same thing with comic books. I want it to be open-brain surgery with a smile.

eBay! [laughs]

This sounds fairly mental. I was working for 2000 AD, and I was bored one day basically, and was procrastinating instead of doing my strip that I was supposed to be drawing. I was looking up stuff on the comic section on eBay and typed in "Tank Girl." Some scripts came up of paragraphs from an unpublished Tank Girl book, which eventually was the book that Alan published called Armadillo, which was his Tank Girl novel. At that stage, his publishers weren't interesting in putting it out, and he was just selling copies of different paragraphs of it on eBay so fans could read it. I bought one and I sent him an e-mail when I realized it was Alan, and asked him why he wasn't putting it out. He said, "Well, nobody's interested and I don't have an artist."

Foolishly, in my over-excitement, I suggested my friend Ashley Wood, who's a very famous Australian artist. He did the Metal Gear Solid comics, and he does his own strip called Popbot, which is quite a big comic in the Sates. It's just been optioned by Disney to be made into a movie. I suggested Ashley as a replacement because, if [Martin] was going to do it, he needed a big name artist. Ashley draws the most beautiful tanks and robots - and he draws amazing women, so I thought he was the perfect choice.

Ashley was keen to do it, and started doing the comic, then he had a conflicting schedule. He asked me to come in and help, and I ended up taking over basically. Alan was happy with what I was doing and we got good feedback from the fans because it looked more like Tank Girl perhaps than the other version. So I ended up doing it. It was basically a £4.99 investment on eBay, so it was a pretty cheap way of getting your dream job.

I was pretty terrified that I was going to be met with a barrage of abuse and such about not being Jamie Hewlett, and it was quite the opposite. Everyone was really lovely and very sweet. There were a couple of people who like "Bah humbug! If it's not Jamie, it's not Tank Girl," but thankfully they all fucked off very quickly. Having scared those people away, what became apparent quickly was that we had a new readership.

I think where we were lucky was that because there was a gap from 1994, 1995 up until two or three years ago, when we started republishing. A lot of the people that read it originally are professional old farts now and they've moved on in their lives. The kids who've picked it up have actually grown up on the movie, so a lot of them were coming to it fresh from the movie and didn't even know it was a comic book. We were getting lots of fan mail saying "it's brilliant that you're making a comic book of my favorite film."

Yeah. It was a very bad experience for them, and it did kibosh the comic the first time around, but bizarrely the movie has given it a second lease of life. Rachel [Talalay], who's the director, and Lori [Petty], who played Tank Girl, have both been incredibly supportive...It set both of them back personally and professionally, doing that film, but both of them have really stuck by it. Lori has a lot of time for Tank Girl fans. She answers questions on Facebook, she's a real sweetheart. She checks in on what we're doing - I talk to her on Facebook most days.

There's this whole new generation of fans that have come to the comic, it's like this whole new generation of Riot Grrrl and SuicideGirl type kids who are doing their own thing. They've got their own take on it, and they don't give a fuck about what was done twenty years ago. A lot of them have got the old comics now and love the old comics, but they like the new ones as well because the new ones are the ones that are coming out now, and for them, that's their Tank Girl.

That's the great thing about Tank Girl, she's always been different things to different people. Originally she was this very punky girl, and then she turned into a hippy, then she was slightly Riot Grrrl-ish, and then she became a bohemian. That's one of the things Alan's always tried to do as a writer. Every time someone tries to claim it, he kicks them in the knackers and runs in the opposite direction. That's the reason why the character's lasted as long as it has. If it had just been a Riot Grrrl comic, which is what a lot of people tried to write it off as in the late '80s / early '90s, it would have dated and we would have been stuck with that one little audience. But because he refused to let anyone put their tag around it, it's always been his, so he's always been able to turn it into whatever he wants.

I think that's why we have such a large female readership, because a lot of the girls who are reading it now are like that themselves. They're like, "I can be whoever I want to be, and fuck you." I love that fact that we're doing a comic book and most of the people reading it are female - and they're vocal as well. They get in touch with us, they communicate and they're enthusiastic.

Well the first one I did with Alan was called The Gifting, which was the one that I took over from Ashley. I did three of the four issues. Then we did a series called Visions of Booga, which is also a book. Then there's Skidmarks, and The Royal Escape, which is coming out as book next month. Our latest image comic that just came out is Tank Girl: Hairy Heroes, which is a collection of war stories, which Alan wrote for me because I've always wanted to do war comic books. That delves into Tank Girl's past, and will be collected up before Christmas as a trade paperback.

It's just come out. It's kind of a racing story and it's got our friend Dee Dee Ramone in it.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, Barbara [Dee Dee's widow] is a friend of mine. I met Dee Dee when he was in London, and I got to know him there, and I was in touch with Barbara after that. With me and Barbara being friends, when it was the anniversary of his death a couple of years ago, I made a suggestion, half-jokingly, [saying] wouldn't it be great to have Dee Dee as a comic book character. She said, "Fuck yeah! Do it!" So I asked Alan to write him into the story, and he did. I know Dee Dee would have loved it. He was a huge comic fan himself. When I did meet up with him in London, he just wanted to talk about comic books.

He liked The X-Men and stuff like that. He didn't collect stuff month by month, he was just one of these people that picked up comic books...We had these very, very funny conversations, and so I know that he would've loved being a comic book character. Particularly as he gets to drive a car with a German helmet and he's trading flick knives, because he was also obsessed with knives. I tried to incorporate all the things that I knew he liked into his character. That's why he's wearing a German helmet, because his mom was German and he grew up there as a kid, so he was very obsessed with German memorabilia and stuff.

Absolutely. We used to get those every Christmas didn't we? That was your only entertainment over Christmas, unless you wanted to watch Bridge On The River Kwai for the eight-hundredth time with your grandma. We wanted it to have that feeling of being a bit like a kids annual. I'm sure a lot of the younger readers won't even get that reference because they don't really do annuals [anymore], but I think a lot of the readers like the fact that they don't get a lot of the references. It's this kind of arcane weirdness, and it almost doesn't matter what it is. For them, it's just this kind of surreal humor, and they don't realize it's all a reference to our childhoods.

Paradoxically, I've been doing it by default without realizing there was actually an alternative to that. I think that's one of the reasons why Alan and I work quite well together, we have a fairly similar world-view of things and sense of humor. When we're discussing stuff, we tend to approach things from a reasonably similar angle. Alan's obviously got a lot more experience than me on the writing stuff, so if I make a stupid suggestion, he can take it and twist it around and completely turn it into something else. That's the great thing about collaborating on the book, it's almost like Chinese Whispers. I'll suggest something and he'll twist it around into something completely unexpected or unanticipated.

For me, it's a bit like for the reader, I'm always surprised when I get the script. I literally don't know from issue to issue what's going on either. Usually when you work with a writer they give you a synopsis, so you have a pretty good idea of what's happening in a series. Before you've even started the first issue, you know how the whole story finishes. Whereas with Alan you don't know what's going on until the last minute when I get the script delivered. I just had to do a cover the other day for an issue where I don't know what's in the issue. I rang him up and asked him, and he was just giving me random words. It was almost like a beat poetry thing, like word association. He was just throwing things at me and I had to piece together a cover from random words

Exactly. Yeah. Welcome to my nightmare. That's it entirely. I'll do something and then he'll go, "Oh, well that's not what I wanted." Then he'll go off in entirely the opposite direction and leave me hanging. It's kind of like an aerial ballet, but with no wings.

[laughs] Yes. Ah nice. Oh happy days. I have this vision of Booga lying on the ground with a pair of panties over his face, sucking contentedly.

Yeah, scratch 'n sniff I think.

Yeah, I'd love to do that. My sister used to collect scratch 'n sniff stickers and nobody was allowed to touch them. I would sneak into her room and scratch them all furiously. She got furious about that.

Yes, that's the new series from Titan Books, the same people who published Skidmarks. That's the series I'm just starting now. It's basically about Tank Girl and Booga breaking up.

Well, you know, these things happen. It's just my way of moving in and getting closer to her...So we're starting this new series. Alan has completed the first issue and I'm drawing it now. That should hopefully be out for the New York Comic Con in October, which I'll be at, doing signings and sketching for people and punching people in the face.

I like drawing kangaroos, so in this story the kangaroo gang that Booga used to belong to are coming back for revenge. It's going to be a nice, big, bloody story. We've discussed the plot synopsis and the story hangs around the fact that Tank Girl and Booga have this huge bust-up and go their separate ways and what happens to them.

Well, you know, sometimes traumatic things have to happen.

Well, I don't know either. Like I said, Alan doesn't write it like that, so I don't know what happens either. He's already killed off Sub Girl, so for all I know he could kill off Booga, he could kill off Tank Girl. I really wouldn't put it past him. He's always said that he intends to kill Tank Girl by having her run over by an ice cream van or something. He's so bloody-minded, he might just do it. I think it would be the best way for a major comic book character to go, crossing the road and getting killed by an ice cream van. Lying there with Mr. Whippy all over the pavement - it'd be fantastic. It's how she would've wanted it.

Well in Portugal I had one girl pull out a bayonet on me, which was interesting. She was like, "I'm Tank Girl," and pulled out a bayonet. That was nice. It was a real bayonet too. Most people you meet are really lovely, but you meet a few weird people. I had a guy come up to me who asked me to draw Tank Girl having sex with Booga - while standing in front of his 8 and 9-year old daughters - who both look like they wanted to die and drop through the floor. I also wanted to die and drop through the floor. I declined his kind offer. I just wondered what his motivation was - particularly having got his whole family with him - which I thought was just a bit weird.

Basically most of the people are really lovely. We get people dressing up as Tank Girl, which I always find funny, and Alan finds absolutely terrifying. I think he still has traumas from the early Tank Girl parties where him and Jamie got chased into the bathroom by fifty Tank Girls, all of whom were intent on either raping them or beating them up.

Well, yeah, I personally don't have a problem with this but to each their own. In the same way that I'm happier going out doing public things more than I think Alan is. Alan likes to stay at home with his family, and I like going out and getting drunk and falling down the stairs. We all do our different things I suppose.

Yes. That was depressing as fuck. If you were Batman, why would you want to run around in blue pants all day?

Well, I can assure you that if you were sitting next to Tank Girl, you'd smell her before you saw her. She's not the most hygienic person in the world. She's definitely someone you'd want to hose down first before taking her to bed. She's a bit of a skank.

For me, as a kid, I used to trade my Action Men for my sister's Cindy Dolls [a British Barbie-like doll] and turn them into soldiers as well. I loved dressing dolls up and I used to design outfits and stuff for them. I've always loved clothes, and being punk, it was about making your own stuff. I live in an old peanut factory, which is full of art studios. All of my neighbors are artists, sculptors, printers and a lot of people here recycle clothes, make their own stuff. It's not unusual to see people walking around looking like they've fallen out of a dumpster.

There's nothing more depressing than when you see people and they're all wearing Adidas and they're all the same. It's like superheroes, it's something which is just pretty bland. I don't want to dress like that. I would feel like a complete cunt if I turned up at a comic convention dressed like Batman or something because I'm not a big muscly guy. Whereas you could turn up as Tank Girl and it doesn't matter [what you look like physically]. It's about the attitude. If someone gives you shit, you kick them in the knackers - that's what's important. It doesn't matter if it's a brand new shirt or the correct Nike top. It's just about fucking getting out there and doing it yourself. That's why I've never wanted to draw superhero comics, because to me, it's a bit like belonging to a team and I hate teams. I don't like sport teams or superhero teams.

Yeah, what little face there is generally. I like dressing up. I like being silly. I mean, I'm looking around my studio now and I can see a sword, a machete, an American helmet...Basically, whatever's on the floor, goes on the girl. I like girlfriends that do the same thing...In our books the same thing happens. Nothing fits, nothing's the right size and everything smells.

I think that's what makes someone appealing. It's about how you wear it, not what you're wearing. You can see someone wearing the coolest clothes in the world, but if they're not inherently attractive in the way that they're carrying themselves it's just all rather bland. That's the nice thing about some of the Suicide Girls - it's down to their attitude.They may not necessarily be a perfect size but it's about the fact that they're happy with who they are.

Like my neighbor Sophie, she dresses like a real tomboy but she's one of the most beautiful people you could ever meet, because she's just inherently happy with who she is. She's a very beautiful person as well, but she doesn't dress like a pretty girl. She's usually wearing a completely scuffed-up pair of boots or something that's ripped to shreds which just looks like she mugged it off an old man - and she probably did. But it's about the attitude she wears it with. That's what makes someone look sexy. Someone who's trying to look sexy, generally looks like a car crash, or something off a television.

The cover for our first image book, it's a blue cover and it's a picture of Tank Girl's head. She's wearing a German helmet, which is a helmet that I've got here. It's got a band around and it's got a Pez machine and cigarettes and all that sort of shit, and she's got a black eye. That's based on Sophie. She came around to my house one morning with her hair all over the place - she'd obviously been up all night at a party - with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth. She sat down and put the helmet on and she had this huge, big shining black eye. She sat there and still looked absolutely stunning. She was an absolute mess, she stank of boose, and she went, "Oh, I think I'm going to be sick." That's the sort of people that I like. I like the sort of people that can sit there with a black eye threatening to vomit on your sofa and you still think they're cute.


The trade paperback of Tank Girl: Skidmarks, which collects together the 4-issue Skidmarks mini-series for the first time, is out now from Titan Books. The trailer for Bad Wind Rising, the forthcoming shocking new saga, which sees Tank Girl kicking Booga to the curb, can be viewed via the YouTubes. For the latest Tankie news visit tank-girl.com and follow @Team_Tank_Girl on Twitter.