Total coincidence it worked like this, schedule-wise. The 5th volume of Bandette, The Wedding of B.D. Belgique, revolves around Bandette's efforts to engineer a marriage between Inspector Belgique and his lieutenant, Heloise Price.
Ostensibly, this is because there is a ring with a map of the Paris catacombs that will lead to an underground base where there is, in addition to art and other valuables, there is evidence of the true identity of the ruthless underworld figure, The Voice. As you might expect, The Voice doesn't want anyone getting that info. And the ring is passed down to the first daughter of each generation of a particular family to get married. In this cases, it's between Heloise and her sister, Abigail, who sees helping The Voice as her path to a life of riches, not realizing it's a path to a grave.
If you're wondering why Heloise and Belgique don't just have a quick marriage to get the ring, well, you, me and Monsieur are all in the same boat. Unfortunately, it's a boat with several very cross women and an irate Chihuahua, so we better just keep our common sense to ourselves. This is an affair of the heart, or something.
Much of the story is Bandette trying to arrange the marriage, including getting Belgique to recognize his feelings for Heloise so this is not a sham joining of two souls, while The Voice tries to wipe out her circle of confederates. Although in that, he's kind of half-assed. He's goes after a couple of the urchins and a young thief named Femme Felon, rather than Monsieur or even Daniel the delivery boy. He does try to take out Heloise via a bomb, which I guess is going straight for the head of the snake.
Tobin writes Bandette as so unserious most of the time it's hard to tell she really cares about this. She and Daniel travel to the circus, on what she says is a matter of learning how to win another's heart. It seems mostly to be an opportunity for her to eat cotton candy and encourage Pimento to make friends with elephants. Which is adorable, but doesn't exactly convey a sense of urgency to the proceedings.
But Bandette is also simply operating on a different level from everyone else. She's less a human thief and more a trickster god, having fun playing around with mortals who think they've got a chance of competing with her. She can afford to goof off, because she already knows where all paths lead.
Coover uses pages with lots of panels. The absolute fewest panels on a page in this volume is 5, and that only a few times. The most is 11, also rare. Usually it's 9 or 8, either 3 rows of 3, or 2 rows of 3 and a row with just 2. The latter seems to be for when she wants to focus a panel on the faces of two characters, say Belgique and Heloise, and give it a little more space.
But she puts all those panels to good use. Showing off the rooftops, cafes, and museums of Paris, but even more than that, showing off Bandette's nature. She is never still, so a series of panels is an opportunity to show her in a variety of postures or activities. It works for montages, as when she drags Daniel around as she questions a variety of people (and also pigeons) about falling in love.
Also, it highlights how quick and sly she can be. In one panel she's looking at a photo of a bust Monsieur planned to steal, in the next she's about to climb in his car while holding his keys. Or she's talking on the phone with The Voice, while assassins try to kill her, then pauses to grab the phone number on a flyer for someone who makes pies.
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