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Bandette 1-5 Review
Writer: Paul Tobin
Artist and Everything Else: Colleen Coover
Monkeybrain Comics
As one of the launch titles for Monkeybrain, Bandette is still going strong and worth 3x it’s download price on comiXology. Bandette is for fans of Tin Tin and euro comics with innocent hijinks and elaborate capers. If that doesn’t peak your interest, move along and read another review.
Bandette is essentially the Pink Panther, a master thief who is both charming and brilliant at out smarting her opponents. The glee Bandette has with life leaps off the page and the art is so adorable that you will want to want lay red carpets and stolen jewels at Colleen’s feet. If you like the cover’s above, that’s what the book’s interior’s are like. The writing is crisp and never slows down. Tobin’s stories are consistently breezy and fun with just a hint that the world outside of Bandette’s gaze is dark and grim and dangerous. Five issues in, it’s consistently excellent, and shows no sign of slowing down.
Bandette takes place in France and in a timeless bubble that feels like the 60’s when she runs across clotheslines between buildings but has modern touches like cellphones. It doesn’t feel retro, it feels stylized, like this is the way the world is supposed to be and we Americans are doing it wrong.
Bandette sees life as a challenge that she is uniquely brilliant enough to defeat. She willingly makes things harder just to make the game more fun. But she also stacks the deck in a way that she always wins. She takes on the police, organized crime, rival thieves, assassins, and never fails to come out on top. She’s Batman clever, but lacks any malice towards anyone. She’s not a pure hearted Robin Hood, but she’s not one to harm anyone, ever. Even in a deadly duel.
This is the title that the Black Cat or Cat Woman would love to have, instead of playing supporting roles and sex toys to male heroes. Bandette has paramours that she rescues, kisses, than dashes off. Add in her mischievous smile, and she’s a thousand times sexier then an unzipped leather suited vixen lying prone on a roof.
This comic alone justifies the effort that Chris Roberson made to create Monkeybrain comics – comics for creators that want to make passion projects. That’s not to say other Monkeybrain titles aren’t good, but rather Bandette is that good.
I dare you to read this comic and not smile.
5/5
Scott is a contributing writer for Drunk On Comics. You can follow him on Twitter at @ScottABachmann.