The Grande Odalisque, v1: A Heist With Fun Personality

If you want to sell a comic, drawing a naked woman falling from a helicopter is a surefire way of attracting attention. (It’s an homage to the original painting, I think…)

The comic is good, though, so don’t worry about the “click bait” cover. It’s a good heist book with a sense of humor and a great friendship at the center of it.

The Grande Odalisque: The Credits Heist

I don’t know who did what. It’s never spelled out in the book, and it’s never spelled out on the website. The typical French way to credit a BD book is to put the artist first, followed by the writer. That’s why I put their names in the order I did in the credits above.

Another Augie of Historic Importance

Before we begin: “La Grande Odalisque” is a painting from 1814 by French artist Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. It depicts a naked woman with a feather duster.

OK, it’s actually a fan made up of peacock feathers, but I’m an artistic heretic who likes cracking jokes.

Her back is also ridiculously lengthy, something that’s even mentioned in the book I’m about to review.

Khan Academy will put this all into proper historical context for you.

Now, let’s get to the book:

What’s Going On?

Carole and Alex have been a team for nine years. They specialize in art heists.

“The Grande Odalisque” is about their biggest heist yet — stealing the painting of the same name from The Louvre. It’s a mission so daring that they’ll have to pull it off in broad daylight because those are their best chances.

But to do it, they’ll need help. So they bring in an arms dealer who happens to be a diplomat’s son, and a skilled motorcycle racer to help with the getaway and some other considerations. They’ll have to train her, but it’ll be worth it.

Of course, things don’t go according to plan. Their arms merchant gets kidnapped by a drug cartel, and so they go to bail him out, causing themselves more trouble and leading to new career possibilities…

And their motorcycle racer is nervous and has an itchy trigger finger.

The heist at the Louvre has a loose plan, but even the simplest plans can go awry. This one does.

It’s a heist story, so of course it does.

But It’s Mostly a Relationship Book

All along the way, the core relationship between Carole and Alex is the strength of the book.

All of the heist stuff is the background that their relationship is seen in front of. They’re an interesting match. They’re not a romantic pair, but a little bit of that tension hangs in the air throughout the whole story, perhaps even more so today than when the book originally saw print in 2012.

Alex is the tough one. She’s hard to date and has a scattered history, usually ending with her throwing the guy away. That’s how she and Carole met, as a matter of fact.

Carole is a bit more accomplished and had a more free-wheeling past, but now she’s also the serious planner and “career-minded” woman. She’s the straight woman to Alex’s wild child.

They’re a bit of the odd couple but in a much friendlier way.

The two recognize that difference and lean into it, relying on the other to keep them on an interesting and fulfilling path.

It also leads to a lot of great conversations, often in the middle of their jobs. The opening heist goes awry when Alex isn’t available to help Carole because her boyfriend was dumping her via text.

Their adventures in Mexico include a movie-like montage sequence as the girls get wrapped up in some pretty crazy stuff on their way to saving their arms dealer friend.

The book relies on those moments when Alex and Carole get caught up in preposterous conversations at the worst possible times. I love their verbal battles and their playful back-and-forths. It’s what gives the book character beyond just being a heist book. We only ever really learn the bare basics of any of their heists in this book. We know just enough to know when it’s going wrong or when it’s executing correctly.

By all rights, Carole should be miserable with Alex as her work partner. Alex isn’t serious or studious enough, she’s quick to emotion, and she gets caught too often.

Carole even tells the man they’re working for earlier in the book that she wants out. But even he knows that she’s just venting. She’ll never leave Alex. She needs that bit of wild adventure in her life, even when it’s frustrating and dangerous.

Adding in Sam, the motorcyclist, adds a new dynamic and new stress to their relationship. Sam and Alex seem to be getting along very well. Carole can see it. It becomes a secondary Will They/Won’t They kind of thing boiling in the background, and it causes a slight change in attitude amongst all involved. It feels like everyone’s walking around on eggshells in this book.

Sam doesn’t play the expected role of inexperienced n00b who throws off the chemistry between Alex and Carole during a job. She learns quickly and can handle herself well, most notably in the big Louvre chase scene at the end of the book. It’s a great moment for her character, and for the action of the book.

There’s also another (training) montage scene where they work Sam through the ringer with hand-to-hand combat, shooting practice, and more. That all pays off hilariously in her first heist where her itchy trigger finger keeps tranquilizing people unnecessarily. For example:

Of all the heists in “The Grande Odalisque”, that’s my favorite for the light-heartedness of it all. It’s a great running gag.

Of course, the Louvre sequence at the end is the big set piece with all the trimmings, but sometimes it’s the quieter parts that really grab you….

This isn’t a particularly deep book. It leaves some things up to the readers’ imaginations, and has a dry sense of humor that keeps things light. The action scenes are a lot of fun. It’s a relatively quick read.

The Thin and Simple Art Style

I should not like this. It’s simple. It’s loose. Characters often look unfinished or awkward.

This panel is our introduction to Carole. It should be a strong visual filled with detail and heroics. Instead, it’s rather simple and looks like the kind of drawing you’d expect on a tiny panel in a little corner of the page. It is not that at all.

This is the kind of artwork I’d expect to see in an independent comic, but never in a Batman or Spider-Man comic, for example. (It’s a far cry from another heist comic I once reviewed, “Curtain Call.”)

Despite all of that, I love this style. I’m not sure why. That’s why I write these reviews. My hope is that in trying to explain it to you, I’ll figure it out for myself.

The art is very… thin. It looks like it’s drawn entirely with a ballpoint pen in a scratchy style where lines never connect and things look perpetually unfinished. There’s no change in line weights. There are no solid black areas.

Underneath that scratchy line, though, is a solid structure. While the finishing details aren’t particularly bold or traditional, they do maintain a strong and coherent style.

The architectural details and perspective are all there in the backgrounds, even if occasionally it looks like a collection of random lines that make up a door frame from time to time.

The whole book looks like it’s printed from someone’s sketchbook layouts. I do love sketchbooks, though, so maybe that’s it?

That’s all combined with the coloring to create depth and textures. There’s a strong sense of light and shadow in the work, even if it’s in a very simple and blocky style. That matches the art, which often suggests forms more than explicitly outlining them.

The art grew quickly on me. It got to the point where an entire face would be missing in a panel where there was plenty of room to draw it in, and I’d just nod and fill in the face mentally and carry on.

Interestingly, the lettering font used in the book perfectly matches the art. It has a very thin weight and an unbalanced look that mirrors the art style well. It looks like someone was hand-lettering the book, because nobody in their right mind would use this font for anything other than an attempt at showing someone with bad handwriting… But it fits here.

Recommended?

Yes. Despite its 125-page length, “The Grande Odalisque” is a quick read, economically scripted, and free from painful exposition.

That’s super impressive in a heist story where so often you need that scene where all the characters sit around a table and talk out their plans. This book doesn’t succumb to that. The combination of the relationship between Alex and Carole along with the strong unconventional art style works for me.

It’s more a summer blockbuster movie than a Netflix maxi-series thriller. For a fun time, read “The Grande Odalisque.”

— 2019.052 —

The Podcast Edition

I devoted an episode of the podcast to this review, as well. It doesn’t cover quite as much stuff, but it does feature my dulcet tones. Everything in life is a trade-off.

Buy It Now

Since my original review of the book, a new Fantagraphics edition of it has come out (09 February 2021), replacing the previous digital editions. Here are the new links now to buy the book, which contains both the first volume that I review here and the second volume, which I still haven’t reviewed:

• Amazon
• Comixology

Sadly, it is no longer available on Izneo.

(As an Amazon Associate I earn a small commission from qualifying purchases. You pay no extra.)