A review by magnetgrrl
Bandette, Volume 1: Presto! by Paul Tobin

3.0

I would rate this - for me, personally - somewhere around 2.5 - 3 stars. The artwork is rad and I kind of like the writing, but it's not all that new or clever. The production value is SUPER sleek. It has a vaguely Euro feel but is completely in English and there's no specific references or tags for anything actually European. It looks like it's translation of some older French comic - it is not - by calling up imagery of other famous Euro detectives and other older Euro comics without referencing anything directly. I think maybe Bandette is a bit too Mary Sue for me, kind of a cipher, and her "Presto!" thing even just in the first volume was a bit overused and immediately started to grate on me. (Like, you're never going to make "fetch" happen, so just give it up.) I can totally imagine that there's a 7-11-year-old girl audience who loves Matilda and Harriet the Spy and who totally would go for this, and if I were a parent of a kid that age, I might be so relieved to be reading something marginally more entertaining for adults than Barney that I would go nuts that this existed. But I don't think this is engaging enough for me, and I doubt I will read volumes 2 or 3.