Reservoir Dogs and why we killed Sub Girl
Top Deck Hand Shandy
In the December 1993 issue of Deadline Magazine, we killed Sub Girl. The Tank Girl story “Morning Glory” (no, it was not named after the Oasis album, this was a couple of years before that LP came out!) took its opening scene from Tarantino’s debut masterpiece Reservoir Dogs, in which the character Mr. White (Harvey Keitel) drives the mortally wounded Mr. Orange (Tim Roth) back to their warehouse base after a botched robbery.
Reservoir Dogs had taken a while to circulate around the British Isles, and had become a legendary must-see movie by the time it was screened in Brighton’s excellent Duke of York’s Cinema in the autumn of 1993 (the film didn’t get a full UK theatrical release until October 1994, and the VHS was held back until May 1995). We loved it, and (as had happened many times before in TG comics) borrowed some scenes from the movie to weave into our own story. We replaced Mr. White with Tank Girl, and (seeing as she had played little-to-no part in the comics thus far, and was seen as “expendable”) decided to put Sub Girl in the backseat in place of Mr. Orange, with the slow-bleed gut-shot.
And that was it. Sub Girl bled-out and copped it. All because we wanted to have a favourite movie scene in our comic. No other reason. Silly sods. Later, whilst cobbling together the story arc for the Tank Girl trilogy that begins with the graphic novel “Two Girls One Tank”, I regretted our flippant dispatch of what had become a much loved (and possibly essential) character, and I devised a way to “reanimate” her. If you haven’t read that story yet, I will say no more. In November this year there will be another chance to grab the whole trilogy in one go, when Titan releases The Tank Girl Trilogy Boxset…
In The Tank Girl Store this week, following on from the first “Special Request” poster magazine, we have another reader-requested issue - “Top Deck Tank Girl”, which has this Jamie-drawn image of TG playing with some rather dubious looking water bombs as a fold-out poster…
…also included in the pack are two badges and an art print. Again, a very limited run of just 50 copies, so be swift if you want one.
There’s still more backed-up news that I have yet to deliver, but I’ll save some for next week.
Back in a mo.
Put the kettle on.
Toodle-pip.
Alan XXX
I was super excited when Sub Girl was resurrected and all the Easter eggs in the Tank Girl comics is one of the many reasons why I love it so much 🥰
You know, like Start Wars, I'd love to see a series of TG stories that were a homage to Quentin.