Tobin and Coover say Bandette is partly an homage to classic heist films they both love, like "Charade" and "How to Steal a Million".
Courtesy of Colleen Coover
Don't get us wrong: there's nothing wrong with zombies. But for every comics reader who's just about done with the current craze for post-apocalyptic tropes, Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover created "Bandette." This effervescent series won two Eisner awards for best digital comics in 2013 and this year.
Bandette is a pert young thing living a barely closeted life of crime. She steals jewelry and fine art, but not for material gain, you see. (That would be so dull.) Bandette lives only to delight herself, leaping across the rooftops of the city to tweak the noses and egos of the real bad guys.
Inspector B.D. Belgique reluctantly calls on Bandette when the need arises.
Courtesy of Colleen Coover
Bandette’s setting is identifiably Parisian, but its time period is deliberately vague. You’ll see characters talking on analog phones and riding 1964 Vespas, and then using cell phones and PCs.
Tobin and Coover do work for major imprints like Marvel and Dark Horse, but when they were approached to do an original digital series, Coover drew an idea from her sketchbook.
"I was feeling very French that day," Coover said, "and I wanted to do a very typically French, bandes dessinées-type character with an enormous nose and a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, round-headed-round-eared French police officer. All my favorite comics come from Belgium."
Bandes dessinées ("drawn strips" in French) such as "TinTin" and "Asterix" set the tone of Coover's design of Belgique.
Courtesy of Colleen Coover
Tobin said he was set on some kind of teen detective. Growing up, he was fascinated by the treasure trove of books his bargain-hunting grandmother would bring home from rummage sales.
“I was really happy when I found a Hardy Boys book I hadn’t read,” Tobin said, “or better yet, Nancy Drew.”
But he didn’t want to do a straight detective story, requiring intricate plotting.
“You always need to have a mystery and you always need to solve it," Tobin said. "So I thought maybe I could flip it around and have her be a thief.”
Both acknowledge their debt to Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s whimsical 2001 film "Amelie," a world of vivid reds and golds, inhabited by a gamine who loves nothing more than taking other peoples’ troubles into her own hands.
Tobin and Coover's heroine often seems completely unconcerned with the material value of he conquests.
Courtesy of Colleen Coover
The resulting mix is part caper, part action series, part romance, as Bandette romps across the rooftops of the city, aided by a cheerful troupe of Parisian millennials. How does a master thief maintain her cover, with so many people in on her secret?
Coover laughed, “I think she just doesn’t worry about it.”
“One of my favorite ways of looking into [Colleen’s] brain when she’s drawing Bandette,” Tobin said, “when Bandette walks across a wire — which she does quite a lot — Bandette never actually touches the wire. It just shows she literally does not care about gravity. It’s not a concern for her.”
“It’s just another law she doesn’t pay attention to,” Coover said.
The series’ third volume, "The House of the Green Mask," will publish October 25.
Watch for an exhibition including Colleen Coover’s work at the Oregon Historical Society.