Wedding Meddling

Pre-wedding jitters.

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.

Sunday Splash Page #445

"Priorities," in Bandette: The Six Finger Secret #1, by Paul Tobin (writer) and Colleen Coover (artist)

Bandette is not a series that utilizes splash pages. No doubt Bandette, the world's greatest thief, would find such things far too limiting. To be satisfied with a single large space to operate in, rather than many small panels from which she can appear and disappear, with almost Looney Tunes-esque defiance of laws of motion? What an absurd notion!

I am inconsistent with titles that were or are a string of mini-series. I've done a lot of the individual Atomic Robo minis, but one post for all of Dave Stevens' Rocketeer stuff, and one for all of Adventures of Dr. McNinja. But my original Sunday Splash Page on Bandette was rather more abbreviated than I would have liked. 

In my defense, I was out of sorts after the tornado that left me living at my father's house, my comic collection piled atop itself in one of the less-cluttered rooms of his house. Tobin and Coover have released two more volumes of Bandette since that post, so I say we're doing this.

So, Bandette. World's greatest thief. Lover of chocolates and art and cats and her little dog Pimento and harassing chain-smoking police officers. A young woman with, a complicated and scandalous lineage, the details of which I can't keep straight. Most every story makes some reference to her ancestors having posed for a sculpture or having deep alliances with the circus or something of that sort.

She is, as presented by Tobin and Coover, almost a mythological trickster figure. Brightly garbed, dramatic just for the fun of it. Always playing a game with people, carrying on monologues as she casually avoids attempts on her life from a variety of weirdos. Backflipping across car roofs while pursued by ninjas without ever breaking her thread of conversation with the mysterious underworld figure who sent the ninjas, or casually eating chocolate while walking across a wire between two buildings.

Even her friends and allies, and she has several people who drop everything to aid her, are often confused. She disappears from one side of a panel, only to reappear from the opposite side of the next panel. Steals the shoes off her rival's feet without his noticing, while he's driving. Pauses in the middle of explaining the history of some mysterious ring to answer the door for a cookie delivery. Even when she seems cross, it feels feigned, irritation with someone foolish who doesn't see the obvious. Like she's dealing with a child.

When I think about it, she's Bugs Bunny and everyone else is Elmer Fudd. Her opponents think they're competing with her for some specific prize, a painting or a secret. The outcome of that was never in doubt. Bandette was already at the finish line before they even started. No, Bandette's concerned with some more intangible goal. A matter of the heart, usually. The prize everyone else is chasing is just a carrot on a stick she uses to create the outcome she wants.

Which, admittedly, irks me at times. I've mentioned before I'm not a fan of stories where the protagonist or antagonist knew everything a character had planned before they even tried and perfectly countered it. That is very much in effect here, especially by volume 5. Bandette seemingly could have nipped The Voice's entire plan in the bud right from the start, as she had it all mapped out and knew everything he was going to do.

I suppose it doesn't bother as much as it did with, for example, Al Ewing's New Avengers, because Tobin and Coover are using their own characters, not someone else's. Also, Bandette does have some ulterior motive she's driving at that accounts for why she's doing things her way. Double-also, her tales, despite the frequent attempts of murder and blackmail, are generally light-hearted. Even if what The Voice or Absinthe seek could be extremely harmful to innocent people, there's no real risk. Bandette's operating on a different level from them. The stories are more about the fun she has along the way than the MacGuffin.

Coover's Paris is a perfect dramatic backdrop, full of steep roofs with chimneys for people to step dramatically from behind. Wires to use like a trapeze, old buildings full of secret passages and rooms. Seemingly an endless supply of cemeteries for tense meetings and museums with things for her to steal. Narrow alleys for ominous footsteps to echo through and make a person feel trapped, but also enough broad streets to have car chases on. Advantage of a city that's grown and expanded across centuries I suppose. Can be a lot of things.

It's a cute series. Charming, maybe. The things that should irritate me more, don't. It's hard to hold a grudge against someone enjoying life as much as Bandette.

Sunday Splash Page #67

"The Direct Approach, Indirectly," in Bandette: The House of the Green Mask, Chapter 1, by Paul Tobin (writer), Colleen Coover (artist)

You will notice this is not a full-page splash. There are no full-page splashes in Bandette. But like hell I was going to skip it.

Besides, it is perfectly in keeping with the title character for her entry into a series of posts about splash pages, to be a 9-panel grid. It is, by nature of the page's rigid structure, contrary to the the way all the other books will do things.

Yes, I'm talking out of my ass, but I'm not wrong.

Bandette Volume 3 - The House of the Green Mask

This collection came out last fall, and normally I immediately jump on Bandette collections, but I was preoccupied. Job, moving, the complete collapse of all hope in decency, the usual shit. But now I have it, hooray! (Before we start, I want to say the colors in the book look much better than they will here. I took the pictures without using the flash, so as to avoid the glare that so often mars the pictures I use here, but the counter to that is how dark the pictures are)

In Volume 3, a mysterious criminal known only as The Voice is abducting people to interrogate them about a House of the Green Mask. One of the people abducted is Daniel, the delivery boy who is one of Bandette's associates (and completely smitten with her). So Bandette sets out to find and rescue Daniel, by drawing in basically everyone she can. Her friends, the police, various politicians and socialites, dogs. She does find him, they rescue the others, we are given a tantalizing hint towards Bandette's backstory, and the Voice is now a potential threat (and source of creative henchmen) going forward, with Absinthe being taken off the board in Volume 2.

But with Bandette, it's less about the plot, and more about how Bandette moves through it, her reactions, the jokes. So there's an extended sequence where she's trailing The Voice across town through a parade, with the aid of her various Urchins. This is played out over several nine-panel grid pages of Bandette in pursuit of his black car, checking in with her friends via walkie-talkie, while sporting a different disguise in each panel. In one, it's Lincoln's hat and beard. In the next, she's dressed like the Man with No Name. And she's wearing this over her usual outfit, while claiming to be in perfect disguise.

Or Le Monsieur, the only possible challenger to Bandette's title as World's Greatest Thief, thinks he's on the trail of the Green Mask, after watching a film about Madame Presto (which Bandette stole and screened for her friends). And that doesn't go how anyone might expect, either.

Paul Tobin's writing is light, and funny, both in terms of sight gags which Colleen Coover ably draws, and some well-delivered lines (which are also aided by Coover's illustrations). Bandette re-positioning a pigeon while telling it that it is interfering with the drama. Tobin's able to write so that, even when Bandette is being serious - for example, when she's advancing on Dart Petite and mentioning how they're going to discuss how Dart harmed 'her Daniel' - the voice is still recognizably her. It felt silly, but also perfectly in character for Bandette to call up her friend in the police, Heloise, simply to tell her she was stomping, then hang up. That should seem stupid or pointless, but the creative team sells it, so it's cute? Charming?

As mentioned above, Coover uses a lot of nine-panel grids, which allows for a deliberate pacing. Jokes can be drawn out over 3 or 6 panels. We can see a sequence, be it a chase, a fight, or simply a conversation with a flow to it. Things don't seem rushed or crammed together. Coover knows what information needs to be in each panel, and doesn't waste space on stuff that doesn't need to be there. Which is kind of key when working with nine panels, since they isn't going to be much room in each one.

Also, Bandette almost seems to use the pacing of the grids as a chance to disappear at the top of the page, then reappear at the bottom. What I mean is, Bandette likes to surprise people, appearing suddenly behind or above them, seemingly from nowhere. But between where she was and where she ends up, we were following someone else across and down the page at the steady pace of the grid. Like in the page above, where we see her in the upper right corner, then we follow Daniel methodically to the right and down, only to be met by Bandette, who has taken some more direct route. But of course a thief would have no time for for the normal narrative flow of the page, and cut simply to the part she enjoys.

As with the previous two volumes, I highly recommend The House of the Green Mask.

31 Days of Scans - 5 Character Dream Team

I said last December I wanted to do a few of those "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" rosters this year, and thus far, I haven't. Because I decided to wait and kick it off with this one. As usual, these can be difficult, because there are so many options. Which is why I have to restrict myself in some ways, or I'll never make a decision. This time around, I opted for characters created outside Marvel and DC. So, same rules apply as the last time, only there'll be no Mastermind, since it states 5 characters only.

The Leader: Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener's Atomic Robo. For the purposes of this exercise, Robo is in his normal body. However, I'm not sure precisely when I'm taking him from. It might be simpler, in terms of getting the team together, to take him from the 1940s (for reasons that will become clear shortly). But if I take '70s Robo, we get possible Carl Sagan appearances and Robo wears a Gilligan hat sometimes. If I take current day Robo, we get the benefit of considerable experience and greater scientific knowledge in our Robo. With the present day, it's easy enough for Dr. Dinosaur's Time Bomb to throw Robo to the '40s, or perhaps another universe. There were his multiple run-ins with the Shadow from Beyond Time, or Tesla's device that opens a doorway to the vampire dimension (which Majestic-12 later got its hands on). Or something else we haven't seen yet. The options are there, and really, any Robo will be good.

So Robo is going to be the leader, but he's also going to be the brains of the outfit, at least as far as science goes. In more criminal areas, there are at least 2 characters on this team more experienced. However, given the nature of the world some of these characters inhabit, Robo is going to run up against some things he is going to have difficulty squaring with his views on how things work. Magic for one, time travel for another. One of the things I greatly enjoy about Atomic Robo is when he gets exasperated with stupidity or nonsense and resorts to sarcasm. Probably because that is how I respond to stupidity and nonsense. I expect this team to exasperate and confound Robo repeatedly. And everyone is a strong personality in their own way, so keeping them together is going to be a challenge. Especially because, in a crisis, Robo seems inclined to try and do everything himself and keep his Action Scientists at a safe distance. Understandable, since he's bulletproof and they aren't, but I doubt this crew will be as accepting. But he'll bring lightning guns, and lightning guns heal all wounds. With horrible burns, but still.

The Man with a Boat: Doug TenNapel's Earthworm Jim. This one is fudging it a bit since, a) Jim was originally a video game character, and b) the comics he did appear in were published by Marvel. But once again, Blog Commissioner allows it (all those illegal payoffs, er, paid off). Jim may or may not have a boat, but he does have a rocket large enough to carry a couple of passengers, and capable of traveling to other star systems. Close enough. (Note: One could substitute the Tick, and it would largely achieve the same effect, but I prefer Jim and it's my team, so nyeah.)

Jim operates in a sort of Silver Age world (which is why I can't be sure he doesn't have a Worm-Boat. He had a Worm-Cycle in the cartoon). Heroes keep their word, and triumph because they believe in things greater than themselves, like honor, or true love. Things that ought to be bizarre are treated as largely unremarkable. Radiation gives you super-powers, not cancer (though the powers are more likely to be funny than useful, as the need for jokes requires). Problems can be solved with science that makes not the slightest bit of sense. In a lot of ways, putting Jim on this team is a way to torment Robo with a heroic version of Dr. Dinosaur. There are going to be times Jim will suggest a completely idiotic solution to a problem (like dressing up as waiters to fool pursuing henchcats into eating explosives dressed up as seafood), and in the time it takes Robo to start listing all the ways that's nonsense, it'll work.

Of course other times, the nonsense solution won't work at all, because it's nonsense. In that event, Jim can just fall back on blasting things. Robo should at least appreciate having another person on the team who solves many of their problems with combinations of shooting, jumping, and hitting.

The Rogue: Colleen Coover and Paul Tobin's Bandette. This could put Bandette out of her depth, which by itself might make it worthwhile. Robo and Jim have both dealt with threats that could have ended existence. Then again, Bandette quite likes the world, because it has so many things for her to take from people, she'd be quite willing to help. Neither of the first two characters are all that great at stealth. But they are both fairly upright guys, so I wonder how much friction there would be about her stealing. Because it's a certainty if they storm the combined lair of Helsingard and Professor Monkey-for-a-Head and she sees a painting she likes, she'll take it. I'm pretty sure she can talk circles around Jim at will, which won't stop him from pleading she abandon her life of crime, and when that fails, probably trying to haul her off to jail.

Robo's going to be a harder sell. But Robo has worked with governments in the past, even though he doesn't trust their motives, because he fears how much worse they'll make things if he leaves them to clean it up themselves. So working with a thief who is more than happy to assist the police in bringing down other, more serious, criminals might be something he can live with. Until it puts the whole team in the crosshairs of someone better left alone. . .

I expect Bandette to enjoy the experience immensely. She's going to have an opportunity to steal things no one else from her world might ever have a chance to even see. She has the chance to become the greatest thief in the entire multiverse, which is the kind of challenge she'd love.

The Muscle: Dave Stevens' Rocketeer. Making Cliff the Muscle is a bit of a joke. If this were the old JLI, Robo would be J'onn, and Bandette would probably be Ted (she's too clever to be Booster). I'm not sure who Jim is, maybe the Big Red Cheese? He has that sort of upright, honest outlook, albeit a little more wacky than Billy. Cliff would be Guy, shooting off his mouth and getting punched in it. I fully expect him to be knocked unconscious within 5 minutes of this group being put together (and I expect Bandette to borrow the rocket pack about 5 seconds later).

Still, Cliff is generally an upright guy despite his temper, and he's more than willing to put his neck on the line. He has a little experience with super-science, so he ought to take a liking to the lightning guns at the very least. I do expect a giant talking worm to shock him (Bandette would probably just respond with some variant of how marvelous it is to meet a giant worm, and set about charming the pants off Jim. Even if she were flustered, she wouldn't show it). Cliff is probably the one who is going to struggle the most to prove his value, so he's going to overreach, make mistakes, try to butt into things that he should have stayed out of.

Also, if you think that Betty will team-up with Bandette at some point, probably to get their hands on some important classified documents, you're absolutely right. Betty's stubborn and enthusiastic nature ought to play well off Bandette's more playful outlook. There will also almost certainly be a team-up between Bandette's dog Pimento, and Butchie, that bulldog that hangs around the diner Cliff eats at most of the time. Hell, we have the possibility of an Atomic Robo/Doc Savage team-up, since the Doc is the one who designed the rocket pack. Hmm, could we tie that into Robo's Flying She-Devils of the Pacific mini-series? Rival jetpack designs, or the She-Devils could have improved on the Doc's design. Basically, my reason for possibly having '40s Robo is to say he and Cliff already inhabit the same universe. Their worlds can at least sort of coexist.

The Woman of Mystery: John Ostrander and Tim Truman's GrimJack. I know you're thinking John Gaunt isn't a woman, and you'd be correct. However, it was established that - spoiler for 25+ year old comic! - having rejected Heaven to save his best friend, Gaunt's fate was tied to the city of Cynosure, and he's doomed to be reborn until the city is destroyed. At least some of the future incarnations we saw in the double-page splash that explained this were female. It could be one of those GrimJacks. A good writer could do something with a character who is a woman currently, and has grown up as a woman, but also remembers past lives as a man just as vividly, and how they choose to identify themselves in light of that. I have no idea, frankly, how GrimJack would approach it, though I expect there'd be an adjustment period when he recalls his past lives and handles it badly. You need someone who isn't me writing this thing for that, but the potential is there.

Setting that aside, GrimJack brings a lot of experience to the table. Even if were aren't using a reincarnation (in which case he has multiple lifetimes), he has decades of conflict in his life. Robo's been alive for awhile, but he's lived comfortably enough he could spend time going to school, running a company, developing entirely new disciplines of science. Gaunt had to spend almost his entire life struggling to survive. Grows up in the shittiest part of Cynosure, the Pit. Gets sent to the Arena to fight for his life for the amusement of the upper class while still a kid. Gets out as a teen, finds a little love and peace in a pocket dimension, then returns home and finds himself in a battle against the literal forces of Hell. Survives that, joins a bounty group called the Lawkillers. Survives that, joins the Transdimensional Police, then the Cadre as an assassin, then becomes a freelance mercenary. He lives and thrives in a city that is constantly changing in size, shape, and population, where the physical laws that govern one street corner may have no bearing around the next block, and that too, is constantly changing. He's pissed off innumerable people, from politicians to bounty hunters to gods. Even if he did catch a bullet eventually, he made past 50 in a profession where a lot of people would be lucky to reach half that. He knows how to survive, is what I'm saying.

It's that knowledge I think the team really needs. Robo can be deceptive, but for him, that means he plays bullet magnet while someone else sets things in motion. Cliff is a generally lousy fighter, and not much good at making plans, and abandons the ones he does make at the drop of a hat. Bandette is sneaky, but tends to let fights drag out because she's having fun. As for Jim, well, despite his great big muscles and his really big ray gun, Jim is still an earthworm, which means he is pretty dumb. Gaunt fights dirty, using any edge he can get. Any weapon, any bit of his surroundings, any distraction, any moment of weakness in his opponent, GrimJack takes advantage of it. He wouldn't have lived as long as he did if he hadn't. Plus, he's getting old, and with the aches and pains, it's just better to end fights quicker sometimes, you know?

Also, I'm curious how he'd respond to Robo. Gaunt had a rule about not allowing Tourbots in his bar (those are ways for people to cheaply travel the city while sitting safely in a chair in an office somewhere, by placing their consciousness in a rolling trashcan), and once of his worst foes was Kalibos, an artificial intelligence that merged science with magic, and kills people to wear their skins so he can roam the city doing as he pleases (sowing discord and chaos as the ultimate expression of his freedom). So GrimJack might have some problems with artificial intelligence. Until Robo helps him put Kalibos down once and for all. Gaunt is, again in JLI terms, Batman, which is not something I'm hugely happy about given my frequent antipathy towards the Bat, but I don't see a better comparison. I do think that, once he got to know them, he'd develop moderately warm feelings. Jim might remind him of his friend Judah the Hammer, Cliff's a young hothead GJ would probably try to keep from getting his head blown off (that said, GrimJack is the one I expect to put out Cliff's lights in the first 5 minutes). I think he'd have to respect Bandette's skill (there will NOT be any romantic relationship between those two. however. Bandette is not spinning the wheel of likely death all his girlfriends have).

As for how you get them all together, rough draft, assuming Robo and Cliff occupy the same universe. There's a mishap with the portal, only they're thrown somewhere other than the vampire dimension, probably Cynosure (or the vampire dimension went into phase with Cynosure and they survived it long enough to emerge into the city, probably joining whatever forces from the city are keeping the vampires from overrunning the susceptible dimensions). At the same time, Bandette's world came into phase, and through some circumstances, she's come into possession of the Manx Cat. Maybe someone from Cynosure came to Paris and found her, and offered her the job. When the Cat gets stolen, GrimJack is the one who always gets dragged in to retrieve it. Which sets off a chase through the city, and Cliff, observing the chase, tries to help Bandette. Which doesn't go well, so Robo jumps in (literally), and GrimJack brings out the heavy artillery. Bandette probably hangs around to watch, or recognizes she has no idea where home is at this stage, and at some point, Robo falls into a section of the city where technology doesn't function, which hopefully slows things down enough nobody gets killed. As for Jim, I expect him to abruptly arrive after an incident involving him trying to make root beer in his garage for a box social he invited his rogues gallery to. He shouldn't have accepted a golf club from Psycrow to stir the mixture doing a thunderstorm. They could potentially end up in a section where technology can develop low-level sentience, in which case his suit would go out of control, and the whole group has to try and contain it, destroy it, or get it to a different area where it'll revert to normal.

Robo ponders the choices that have brought him to this place in "Why Atomic Robo Hates Dr. Dinosaur", by Brian Clevinger (writer), Scott Wegener (artist), Ronda Patterson (colorist), and Jeff Powell (letterer). Commandeering a giant hamster to stop a shotgun wedding is just another day in the life in Earthworm Jim #2, by Dan Slott (plot), John Lewandowski (script), Barry Crain (pencils), Sam DeLa Rosa (inker), UL Higgins (pencils), Ed Laz (colorist). Bandette is living the dream in Bandette #3, by Paul Tobin (writer), Colleen Coover (artist), Ryan Jurgensen (digital production), and Irina Beffa (design). Cliff is more confident than he ought to be in Rocketeer, Chapter 4 (I couldn't figure out which comic specifically it would be in), by Dave Stevens (writer and artist), Laura Martin (colorist), and Carrie Spiegle (letterer). GrimJack's stint as a dentist ended swiftly amid complaints about his primitive working conditions in GrimJack #1, by John Ostrander (writer), Tim Truman (artist), Janice Cohen (colorist), and John Workman (letterer).

We Have A Strong Contender For My Favorite Collection Of The Year

As I've said I'm not much for digital comics. I'm glad that it offers greater opportunities for people to get their work out there and seen, but strictly from a reading perspective, I prefer to have a physical copy in hand. So it's nice when people get their digital comics collected and released in some nice hardcover format. Like, oh, let's take a totally random example, Colleen Cover and Paul Tobin's first volume of Bandette.

I've also said I like fictional thieves, caper flicks, stealth games, things of that nature. Garrett from the Thief series. The Black Cat. Even Gambit, if he'd stop being a sleazeball and just steal stuff. So a story about a young woman who steals priceless art and books because she finds it to be great fun was likely to be right up my alley. I was so sure of it, I went to the trouble of pre-ordering it, which is extremely rare for me with trades.

So you have Bandette, who is a thief, but one who will help insurance companies recover (most) of a set of stolen Rembrandt's from an arms dealer, or help the police with a bank robbery turned hostage situation. Unfortunately, the latter event puts her in the cross hairs of a man known as Absinthe, who runs an organization known as FINIS. Ostensibly a charitable organization, it's actually a vast criminal enterprise devoted to using vice and violence to spread its influence worldwide.

Bandette's made aware of this threat to her well-being by a rival, an older gent known as Monsieur, but she's more interested in a list of items he was asked to steal from Absinthe by a mysterious Madam. After some deliberation, she proposes the two thieves work together. . . competitively. They will both try to steal the items, and along the way, any information they unearth on FINIS' criminal activities will be passed along to Inspector Belgique, a police officer Bandette has a amusingly antagonistic, "friendship" is perhaps too strong a word.

It's a delightful book. Bandette's a character who pursues enjoyment of life, in whatever form it takes. Candy bars, pranks, theft, dodging death threats, thwarting the schemes of more unpleasant criminals. She can be caught by surprise or outmaneuvered, but it leaves her only mildly put off at worst, and depending on how it's accomplished, she may even be delighted by it. It isn't that she doesn't recognize the seriousness of situations, more she doesn't see why a serious situation should mean she can't have any fun. Monsieur is much older, more reserved, but is clearly someone who steals because he enjoys the challenge, and for the opportunity to see and appreciate great works it affords him. He's not so boisterous as Bandette, but he's no dour stick-in-the-mud. That might be Belgique, though he's easily riled and quickly profane, so he's at least a comically unhappy person. That's kind of how the cop has to be, though. You have to be able to laugh at him, or you might start to feel bad he's never going to catch the thief*.

I will admit I turned into Annoying Fan Guy when Matadori appeared. When she tells Bandette the bull is dangerous in the beginning, but then it tires my brain was going, "Um, actually, Death in the Afternoon said the bull gets more dangerous as the fight goes on because the bull figures out the matador's tricks." Flippin' brain, now it thinks it's some bullfighting expert. It almost works, because Matadori is very confident, well beyond the point of arrogance, so maybe from her perspective what she says it true, because she can't envision letting the fight go that long. Or I"m trying to excuse my stupid brain.

Coover's artwork is excellent, as you would expect if you're familiar with her work. The coloring is a bit different than what I remember from some of her other work. Perhaps because she does it herself. The hardcover includes her description of how she goes about creating a page, from initial sketches to the final coloring process, complete with accompanying images, if that's something you are interested in. I need to read it more thoroughly myself. The characters are distinct, the backgrounds convey a real sense of place, and I really enjoy how she draws Bandette. She's rarely still more than two panels in a row. Even when she opts for a more firm stance (see the image below), she can't help expressing her glee and two panels later she's doing a handstand on a crypt. She's almost constantly moving, hanging from something, or climbing something else, gliding across rooftops. There's a lightness to her step that seems very appropriate for such a cheerful, exuberant character**. In contrast Monsieur is more grounded in his movements, but a lot of times, we don't see him move at all. He simply appears, quietly, in the panel where was was not before. That's his preferred style.

Add it all up, and I give Bandette my highest recommendation. I don't know when there will be a second volume - I haven't seen anything on Paul Tobin's website about more issues appearing online yet - but hopefully it won't be too long.

* It might still happen. I always felt bad for Inspector Zenigata in Lupin III. Good cop, honest as the day is long, but much like Wil E. Coyote, he hasn't got a prayer).

** This isn't relevant to Bandette itself, but that's basically how I see Cassanee/the Lady in Orange moving when I try to describe it in my stories. I'm never quite sure if I pull it off, though, so it was nice to see it visualized, even if for an entirely different character.