Comic Book / Les Nombrils

From left-to-right: Jenny, Vicky, and Karine^note Pre-makeover

Les Nombrils ("The Bellybuttons") is a French-Canadian series following the misadventures of long-suffering Karine and her two "friends" Vicky and Jenny. Starting off as a gag strip it quickly became a dramedy about the daily lives of the three with Karine learning to stand up for herself while Vicky and Jenny learn that there is more to life than hanging off the hunkiest boy in school.

The series was introduced in 2004 in issue #188 of the Québécois humour magazine Safarir. It was later picked up in 2005 by the Franco-Belgian comics magazine, Spirou. Spirou's publisher, Dupuis, published its first BD album, Pour qui tu te prends?, in 2006.

The title "Nombrils" is a play on the French term "nombriliste", which means "self-absorbed" or "self-centred".

An English version of the series, with its title directly translated to "The Bellybuttons", was introduced in 2009 by British publisher Cinebook.

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Les Nombrils provides examples of:

• Abusive Parents:
  • Vicky's mother and to a lesser extent her father, of the emotional and neglectful variety.
  • Karine's parents have a tendency to slap her when she talks back, though it's played more for laughs than Vicky's situation.
• Abhorrent Admirer: Most of the guys' who follow Vicky and Jenny are this but Murphy probably wins the prize for most abhorrent, by not only being covered in huge zits but for also having a rather terrible personality.
• Aesop Amnesia: Whenever Vicky starts opening up to her friends in earnest, her awful family's toxic influence turns her back into a raging Alpha Bitch.
  • Speaking of her family, you'd think having their daughter nearly killed would finally make them treat her as a daughter and not as a prop? Think again! They disown her not an album later.
• The Alcoholic: Jenny's mom spends her days and nights in a drunken stupor, muttering insults while clinging to a bottle.
• Aloof Big Sister: Rebecca, Vicky's older sister, loves nothing like bullying her and making her miserable.
• All Men Are Perverts: All the guys who lust after Vicky and Jenny, but particularly Murphy. Dan, Albin and Hugo seem to avert this.
• Alpha Bitch: Jenny and Vicky, although it is somewhat toned down in later volumes. Somewhat. Mélanie also reflects this trope, when we realise she's even more manipulative than Jenny and Vicky combined.
• Ambiguously Gay: Vicky, on the one hand she has never shown interest in women other than Megane, on the other her pursuit of men was always superficial even more so than Jenny. Her pursuits were either to increase her own social status or to steal men away from Jenny and/or Karine to lower theirs. She also never showed the level of attraction she shows for Megane for any guy.
• Ambiguously Evil:
  • Albin is trying to get Karine to cut off contact with her friends, a classic sign of controlling behavior, but then again her friends are Vicky and Jenny. Also it's left ambiguous whether Karine's changes in lifestyle since meeting him were really her choice or his. Albin eventually confesses that he finds shy girls and turns them into goths, but that he does it because he enjoys making weak-willed girls strong.
  • Is Mélanie a bitch intentionally or is she a sociopath and can't help it? The fact that she was willing to poison herself in order to frame Karine seems to point more toward psychological issues. To confuse the matter further, it is shown that all of Mélanie's humanitarian projects are in an effort to alleviate the guilt she feels about her actions. Still, both might just be trying to excuse their unsavory personality traits.
• Anguished Declaration of Love:
  • Vicky does eventually admit she is in love with Megane, but also realizes she will never be happy. If she chooses Megane she will lose her family, and her affluent life, if she chooses her family she will never have true love. All because her parents are homophobic.
  • Averted with Jenny, she realizes that she is in love with Hugo but can't bare to ruin her reputation by admitting it in public. When the opportunity presents itself, Jenny is tempted to jump into his arms but her pride wins and she ends up publically humiliating him instead.
• Ascended Extra : Characters like Mélanie and Hugo can actually be seen in Early Bird Cameos in the first volumes, before gaining importance.
  • Gabrielle, one of the lesser mean girls of the school, gets A Day in the Limelight in the spin-off, revealing that she used to be Vicky's Only Friend before she dumped her for the much more popular Jenny. She goes as far as accidentally poisoning Karine in order to get back at Vicky by slipping crushed sleeping pills into her soup thinking they were laxatives.
• Asshole Victim: Xander. At the end of Volume 8, Karine chooses to leave the weed from Gary's coat in his car, and calls the cops on him. Yes, Xander was kind of a douche and was milking his brother's death for publicity with a very moving, completely fake song (he hated his half-brother and had originally written the song long ago about his dog), but was it really enough to justify ruining his career and giving him a police record? That said, weed or not, he was drunk when he drove off, and that was his own choice. However, Karine's motive was not so much protecting other drivers, as it was to get his band out of the competition to win an award.
• Balloon Belly: Jenny gets one in volume 6, causing her to be Mistaken for Pregnant.
• Bare Midriffs Are Feminine: An interesting case. True to the title, most of the outfits the three protagonists wear show their bellybuttons, though as they go through Character Development they start to cover up more. It's most noticable with Butt-Monkey Karine, after getting a Goth type makeover and learning to stand up for herself, pretty much stops baring her midriff, but it's also very clear with Brainless Beauty Jenny, who after an album-long Humiliation Conga has forced her to face some unpleasant truths about herself, adopts an entirely new style that signifies that she's matured and become a better person — the introduction of her "new look" late in album 8 is the first time in the comic where she doesn't bare her midriff. As of the end of album 8, only Vicky (who tragically starts Character Development but regresses) still bares her midriff.
• Batman Gambit: Karine becoming adept in these in volume 3, but alas her "friends" also know which button to press to get them into humiliating situations.
• Be a Whore to Get Your Man: Vicky and Jenny's modus operandi. Well... Jenny's anyway; Vicki's all talk and no action. She's also a deeply closeted lesbian, who spends much of the series in total denial about her sexuality.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Karine, after some serious Character Development. How she deals with the Bitch in Sheep's Clothing and later The Rival shows this clearly.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Mélanie. So very, very much. She acts as the sweetest things since pastries, but is even more manipulative and selfish than Vicky.
• Bittersweet Ending: After the Downer Ending of Volume 7, Volume 8 ends on a more positive note... though there's plenty of tragic or ominous elements there that keeps it from being an outright Happy Ending. After an album-long Trauma Conga Line, Jenny has recovered, Took a Level in Kindness and is a better and happier person than she ever was before, now openly dating Hugo and having repaired her friendship with Vicky. Albin and the Albinos, after a bit of struggling, have won a prestigious music awards and have become a success. At the same time, Karine is plagued by guilt for what she did to Xander, and Vicki, who just seemed ready to accept her sexuality and confess to Mégane, discovers that she insulted the girl one too many times and how her chance seems to be blown as Mégane instead got with Lara. The last we see of Vicky in the album, she's depressed and has started comfort eating again.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Karine, Vicky and Jenny form this trio until the end of volume 4, at which point Karine starts dyeing her hair black.
• The Bore: James is not that bad a guy, really, but he has zero personality. His only interests are blockbusters, Top 50 music and taxation law (like his daddy). It doesn't help that Vicky isn't even as attracted to his good looks as she'd like to be.
• Brainless Beauty: Jenny fairly quickly reveals herself to be this. It gets worse as the series goes on, but already in the first album she has a moment when she needs a calculator to figure out what 2+2 is.
  • In volume 7, Jenny meets her boyfriend's friends' girlfriends, who are all even dumber than she is.
• Breather Episode: Les Vacheries des Nombrils in general, which started right after volume 7.
• Butt-Monkey: Karine, Karine, Karine. People respecting her and not walking all over her can be counted on one hand, and her family is not in the list. Also a nasty case of The Chewtoy, due to the anguish it causes her.
• Cerebus Syndrome: The comic started out as a series of gag strips. The second volume starts introducing some Freudian Excuse scenarios for Vicky and Jenny, and by the time of volume 3 it was going into some pretty involved storylines, which got progressively darker and more dramatic.
• Children Raise You: Between the mother being The Alcoholic the older sister bordering on Too Dumb to Live, and the brother being a toddler, Jenny's little sister is the only mature one, and the one who keeps the household afloat.
• Chivalrous Pervert: Gary, the drummer for Albin and the Albinos, is perfectly open about at least partly having gone into music because it was a good way of scoring with a lot of girls. Unlike 90% of the male characters in the comic, though, he's amiable, respectful and, yes, even chivalrous.
• Chocolate Baby: Willy, Jenny's baby brother, has brown skin and hair in a family of white redheads. As it turns out, he takes after his dad...
• Closet Key: After their kiss, Vicky realises she has feelings for Mégane.
• Comedic Sociopathy:
  • The main source of humor whenever Jenny and Vicky are around. Especially Vicky.
  • John John spent a good part of volume 2 beating the snot out of Dan.
• Conjoined Twins: John John
• Corrupt the Cutie: Karine's journey into confidence leads her to places even Albin, who was more than willing to break a few pots, had not foreseen. Exposing Mélanie was very unlike her, but she had it coming; actively planting drugs in Xander's car, however...
• Cultural Translation: Vicky's father forced her to go to English Camp every summer, and he always throws random English phrases in his dialogue. English translations change it to French Camp and gratuitous French.
• Dark and Troubled Past: All the members of Albin and the Albinos have this to some extent, as the band consists of people who have been victims in the past: Albin was bullied for his albinism, and a prank on him lead to a horrible housefire that killed twelve of his classmates and left Vinko disfigured. Red was once assaulted and left for dead by homophobes. Only Gary's past remains a Noodle Incident.
• Deliberately Monochrome: Since his decision to take pride in his condition, Albin only wears white, with red-tinted glasses to accentuate his eyes. Inspired by him, Karine starts dressing in all black, as did the eleven other girls he decided to make his "special projects".
• Devilish Hair Horns: Albin seems to deliberately cultivate his own satanic imagery. Possibly as part of his stage persona.
• Deadpan Snarker: Gary is the snarkiest of the Albinos. He often uses humor to relieve tension, though it doesn't always work... sometimes he doesn't accomplish anything other than annoying the other members.
• Disappeared Dad: Jenny never knew her father, and according to her mother, she doesn't want to know him.
• The Ditz: Jenny. So very much.
• Divergent Character Evolution: For much of the first book, Vicky and Jenny are interchangeable, being equally mean and manipulative. Towards the end of the book we start seeing a difference between them, with Jenny's Brainless Beauty traits played up a lot more and her maliciousness heavily toned down. In subsequent albums she is pretty consistently portrayed as an Innocently Insensitive Ditz who generally just follows Vicky's lead.
• Double-Meaning Title: In French, the title isn't just about the preponderance of exposed midriffs for the protagonists, but also allude to the French expression "believing you're the bellybutton of the world," which is said about someone being extremely self-centered, fitting perfectly with Jenny and Vicky.
• Downer Ending: Volume 7, dear god. Jenny realizes she really is in love with Hugo and wants to be exclusive with him, to bad this is after she publically humiliated him by rejecting his "him or me" ultimatum. Vicky finally stops denying she is in love with Megane, but then can't risk throwing away everything to be with her. Karine finds out that Albin is a chronic manipulator and that she is number 12 in his list of victims. Vicky after getting drunk and rejecting Megane decides to take her frustrations out on Jenny which leads to Jenny outing her and Megane's activities which then leads to a huge fight between Vicky and Megane's bigot parents as they try to pass blame for their "deviant" daughters.
• Dramatic Irony: No-one but the reader knows that Jenny's younger brother, Willy, is also Vicky's half-brother. At least until the end of Volume 7. Which is revealed to all when Vicky and hmer dad come to live with Will's new/old girlfriend, Jenny's Mom.
• Egocentric Team Naming: Albin's band "Albin and the albinos".
• Elegant Classical Musician: Mégane's parents wanted her to be this, but she hated piano and eventually sabotaged her career in order to become a rock bassist, after threatening her parents of taking up the bagpipes.
• Engineered Public Confession: How Karine gets back at Mélanie, by tricking her into a Just Between You and Me that she records on her phone and projects on a screen.
• Epic Fail: Dan tries to pretend Karine's drug is his, the principal know that aside the haircut Dan doesn't look like The Stoner. He then tries to shoot himself to prove it. The drug is marijuana. Instead he just calls the principal fat which pisses her enough that she suspends him instead of Karine.
• Evil Versus Evil: Much of volume 4 revolves around Vicky and Jenny's rivalry with Mélanie, with Karine siding with her "friends". YMMV as to who is worse.
• Extreme Doormat: Karine's primary character trait. At least for a while. There are implications that Karine is still a doormat — it's just that the only one walking over her is Albin, and he's such a master of manipulation she doesn't realize it. For a while at least.
• The Faceless: John John never takes off his helmet. For understandable reasons.
• Family Theme Naming: Jenny and her little sister Jenna are both named after their mother Jennifer. Only their baby brother Willy isn't named after her; that's because he's named after his dad.
• Five-Finger Discount: Jenny has a habit of doing this.
• Flanderization: Jenny's stupidity increases each album. She started out as merely vaguely ditzy and bad at schoolwork, but by the fifth album she's essentially Too Dumb to Live.
• Forced Out of the Closet: At the end of volume 7, Vicky, drunk out of her mind, gets in a public fight with Jenny about Jean-Franky's behavior, accusing the two of them of being leeches and loudly claiming that Jenny is in love with Hugo; Jenny replies by loudly claiming that Vicky is in love with Mégane after she saw the two kiss earlier. Mégane takes the blame for the kiss, and Vicky allows her parents to believe that she was assaulted by "that dirty dyke".
• Foreshadowing:
  • A subtle, possibly unintentional one, but Karine's Dream Sequence in the first album where she's inexplicably turned into a total knockout but also to her horror finds herself developing a mean streak. It's never this exaggerated, but she does eventually get a makeover and discover that She Cleans Up Nicely... as well as getting a few shocking Beware the Nice Ones moments that borders on cruelty. Same dream also has Jenny as her normal self but Vicky has turned fat, hinting both of Vicky's Formerly Fat reveal and that Karine subconsciously thinks better of Jenny than she does of Vicky.
  • John John sometimes seems to contradict himself or have problems making up his mind... Come the end of the third album, we find out why. He's conjoined twins. The smaller voice that sometimes pipied up, sometimes with a different opinion, was in fact his twin brother.
  • In volume 6, Mégane sure is eager to get Vicky into her bedroom and gets noticeably jealous when Vicky shows interest in her brother.
  • Vicky always seemed uncomfortable when the topic of her kissing (or doing other stuff to) guys was involved, even when she was the one who started the topic to tease someone. Besides, she fell from a roof to avoid kissing a guy (although it was Murphy, so it may not count). She's gay. In addition, it seemed that she had never actually kissed a boy until Megane and her brother James, always shoving it on Jenny.
  • The identity of Willy's father is heavily hinted at until The Reveal at the end of the seventh book.
  • Vicky's issues with her weight and relationtionship with food are peppered here and there throughout the series. At the end of volume 8, broken-hearted, she completely gives in to her tendency to eat her feelings and puts on a significant amount of weight.
  • When Vicky tries to convince Lara to replace Jenny as her hot friend, Lara specifically says okay because she thinks Vicky is hot, this ends up foreshadowing that Lara is bisexual and will get with anyone as long as they are high enough on the social latter.
• Formerly Fat: Vicky used to be a very chubby kid. It's still a very sore point to her, as her family never ceases to remind her of that and keep her on a very strict diet.
• Frame-Up:
  • Melanie poisons herself with food allergy to frame Karine.
  • Karine herself pulls this in book 8 when she plants drugs in the car of the leader from a rival band and calls the cops on him. Beware the Nice Ones indeed. Even Albin is impressed.
• Freudian Excuse:
  • Vicky might be a pretty awful human being but realizing that her dad is a greedy jerk who raised her to believe that compassion is a hindrance, her mother being mentally abusive and pounding in her head that status is everything, and her older sister Rebecca being ten times the Alpha Bitch she is, it's not hard to see why she acts the way she does. Her trick to buy her friends' forgiveness after being awful to them is pulled directly from her mother's book, and when she actually does something thoughtful and genuine, she quickly realizes that no one would do the same for her, making her lash out in sorrow and bitterness.
  • Jenny gets her image obsessed attitude from her alcoholic mother, who slams the door in the face of Hugo, her average looking boyfriend, while stating she could do better. This is right after she gave a speech to Jenny about liking whoever she brought home.
• Gayngst: At first Vicky vigorously denies she has any attraction to Megane, but even when she does finally admit her feelings she still can't follow through on them because it would mean being disowned by her family. The revelation makes her realize she can never be happy.
• Genius Ditz: Jenny might be dumber than a sack of bricks, devoid of logic and Literal-Minded like you would not believe, but she can show some serious emotional intelligence and know how her friend think... When Flanderization does not make her Too Dumb to Live that is...
• Gold Digger: Vicky's mom is one, and considers it a proud family tradition that she intends to impart on her daughters, as her own mother did before her.
• Gonk: The word "ugly" gets thrown around an awful lot in this comic, but Murphy stands out by being genuinely repulsive-looking.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: While generally hidden behind hair or clothes, Vinko's facial burns are in full display during the climax of volume 6, after the truth about him is revealed.
• Glory Hound: As Albin points out, and Karine can't deny with complete honesty, one of the reasons she wants the band to take off is because she enjoys being more popular than Jenny and Vicky.
• Hate Sink: Vicky's Rich Bitch parents. Not even losing all their fortune deprives them of their repellent, self-satisfied and bigoted attitude.
  • Mégane's parents are just as bad, if not worse.
• Has a Type: Will, Vicky's father, has a thing for redheads. Just ask Jenny's mom.
• Heel Realization:
  • Repeatedly parodied and subverted with Jenny, who every so often realizes that she's behaved badly and tries to make amends... only to to reveal that she totally misunderstood exactly what she did wrong and why it was wrong, so attempts at making amends end up not even addressing the issue or even making things worse. And then finally played straight towards the end of Volume 8. It took an album-long Trauma Conga Line of Break the Haughty, and a The Reason You Suck speech from Murphy, of all people, but she finally comes around to realizing just what a terrible person she's been, especially towards Hugo, and truly changes for the better.
  • Vicky can, very rarely, admit how she likes her friends and how screwed up she is, but Aesop Amnesia literally has her name written on it.
• Heroic BSoD: After Vinko's revealed to be a serial killer, Albin becomes a shell of his former self.
• Hidden Depths: Most of the characters have more to them than is apparent at first glance... the hidden depths aren't always nice, however.
  • Explicitely discussed by Jenny and Hugo: while she saw him as just another unattractive suitor among dozens, she comes to appreciate him for his kindness, humor and thoughtfulness; meanwhile he stops seing her as only a pretty face when he sees what sort of home life she manages to return home to every night with a smile.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: Vicky has one, albeit buried very, very deep. She totally flips out her sh*t when she realises that Karine might be targeted by a Serial Killer and shows selflessness for the first time of her life to protect her.
• Hiding Behind Your Bangs: Vinko has long hair covering half of his face to hide a large disfiguring burn.
• Huge Schoolgirl: Karine is comically tall.
• Informed Attractiveness: In some gags, Jenny is said to be more beautiful than Vicky, despite them looking almost the same, save for skin color, hair, and nose shapes.
• Innocently Insensitive: Most of Jenny's more mean-spirited moments are a result of this. Unlike the far smarter and more cynical Vicky, Jenny isn't actually malicious, just very stupid and narcissistic. Usually she doesn't even realize when she's being a terrible person.
• Insult Backfire: When Jenny tries to get Hugo back (but still refuses to accept him for who he is), he calls her a superficial girl, to which she responds it's the first time someone said something nice to her in weeks. And after digging herself deeper, Hugo called her "Self-Centered and Pathetic". Which makes her question how he can reject her if she has "so many qualities."
• Insult of Endearment: Mégane continues to call Vicky "Barbie" teasingly even after developing feelings for her.
• Interclass Friendship: Vicky's parents are very wealthy, Karine's are lower middle class, and Jenny lives in a slum with her unemployed, semi-catatonic single mom and two younger siblings. It eventually becomes a problem when Vicky starts feeling like Jenny is only pretending to be her friend to get cash out of her.
• Irony: Vicky's vengeance towards Jenny for the events in Volume 7, involves sabotaging Jenny's appearance, causing her to not only lose her social status at school,but become shunned by her own image-obsessed family. This, however, ends up causing Jenny to undergo Character Development , culminating in her public confession to Hugo, leading to her becoming a happier and better person than she ever was.
• It's All About Me: The title refers to both exposed midriffs and this, "le nombril du monde" being a French expression for people thinking everything is about them (as if they are the bellybutton of the world). Jenny and Vicky are the epitome of total self-centered behaviour, albeit in slightly different ways: Jenny is just too narcissistic and oblivious to realize that she isn't the center of everyone's world, while Vicky gets jealous and malicious as soon as anyone takes attention away from her.
• I Was Quite a Looker: Murphy's grandma was the Jenny of her day, but now she's an obese old woman with burnt out hair and varicose everywhere. Inverted with his grandpa, who looked just like him as a teenager and aged into one hell of a Silver Fox.
• Jerkass: Vicky and Jenny, to a hilarious degree, though they do have their redeeming moments, especially Jenny. Murphy, too, though his redeeming qualities are approximately zero.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • Murphy is one of the most repulsive people in the comic both in looks and personality, but his little speech in Volume 8 about people who aggressively judge others based solely on appearance is totally on point. It's in fact his honest The Reason You Suck speech to Jenny that makes her fully realize how badly she's treated Hugo and what she needs to do to make up for it. This moment marks the turnaround in Jenny's storyline in Volume 8, when she pulls herself out of her depressed funk and really changes for the better.
  • The reason Jenny first fell into Vicky's Toxic Friend Influence and let her take advantage of her stupidity? Vicky was the only person in their entire middle school not to slutshame or objectify her for having won the early puberty lottery (or at least the only person not to act like an animal about it).
  Random girl, under her breath: Slut.
  Vicky: And that means "I would love to wear miniskirts too if I had legs half that beautiful".
• Jerk Jock: Jean-Franky. His entire circle of friends qualify too.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Xander, the lead singer of the Underdogs, is haughty and condescending toward Albin's band. However, after his older brother tragically dies, he composes a song about him that immediately becomes a hit. Karin then learns that he actually hated his brother and used his death for popularity.
• Kick the Dog: It's bad enough that Mélanie stole Dan away from Karine, but she just had to needlessly rub it in her face too.
• Knight of Cerebus: The Bitch in Sheep's Clothing sure was a nasty piece of work, but come on. What could be worse in a teenage drama? Answer: well, how about a Knight Templar Serial Killer? Yes. He's as horrifying as he sounds.
• Knight Templar: Subverted or double-subverted? TRIPLE-subverted! Albin has some tendencies in this direction, but not to the murderous extent hinted in volume 5. His childhood friend, on the other hand, seems engaged on a personal crusade to eliminate the worst victimizers he knows.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Being robbed of all their fortune by a trusted associate would normally be an awful fate, except that Vicky's family were absolutely rotten, elitist, uncaring, outright abusive people swearing only by money, status and prestige, who raised not one repulsive Alpha Bitch but two. Poverty is the worst thing that could happen to them, and few would empathise.
• Love Epiphany: Vicky has one in volume 6 when she kisses James, she spots Mégane looking down at them from her bedroom, and blushes deeply, while stuttering and her heart racing. She later realises the one she loves might just be Mégane.
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl:
  • Mégane for Vicky, encouraging her to rebel against her parents' expectations for her.
  • Albin convinces Karine to break out of her shell and try new things. He is a deconstruction of the trope, as he has a reputation of doing this to girls, and then dumping them not long afterwards to find a new girl to fix up. Karine is the 12th girl he's done this to.
• Manipulative Bastard:
  • Vicky tries to be one, though her manipulations are pretty shallow. The only people they work on are Brainless Beauty Jenny and Extreme Doormat Karine.
  • Mélanie and Albin are both more realistic and more successful versions, though Albin is a less villainous version.
• Manly Gay: Dieudonné the gym teacher.
• Meaningful Rename: Albin. His birth name is Alain, but as he grew up, he chose to shed his name in order to get away from his Dark and Troubled Past and finally take pride in his condition.
  Albin: I went from A to B. From Alain to Albin.
• Mood Whiplash: The are always jokes even in the most dramatic moments.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Karine suffers a big case of this after finding out Mélanie jumped off a bridge shortly after Karine screamed at her to do just that. Luckily Mélanie lived.
• Never Learned to Read: John John. In fact, he can read and writes but his spelling is terrible.
• Nice Girl: Karine herself.
• Nice Guy: Dan. He does have a few Jerkass moments, and gets carried away a little too easily, but he means well.
  • Hugo is probably the most genuinely nice person in the comic, though there's a limit to how far you can push him.
• Noodle People: Everyone is drawn rather Noodly, but none more so than Karine.
• Nice Mean And In Between: Extreme Doormat Karine is Nice, Alpha Bitch Vicky is Mean and Innocently Insensitive Jenny is In-Between. Vicky does have her nice moments and Karine (especially post-Character Development) could be the poster child for Beware the Nice Ones, but the dynamic is pretty prominent for most of the comic.
• No-Respect Guy: Karine, most of the time. Hugo too, to a lesser extent.
• "Not Wearing Pants" Dream: Inverted in the image for September in a 2009 Spirou calendar◊ where Karine dreams that everyone except her has gone to school naked.
• Obfuscating Stupidity:
  • John John pretends being far more Book Dumb than he really is to prolong high school.
  • In the climax of volume 4, Karine pretends to go along with Vicky and Jenny's not-so-brilliant plan in order. In so doing, and by letting Mélanie discover it, she tricks her into lowering her guard and falling for Karine's real plan.
• Obliviously Evil:
  • Jenny can be nice. A significant part of her Comedic Sociopathy appears to be the result of obliviousness and Vicky's bad influence.
  • Albin seems to genuinely believe his controlling behaviour over Karine is justified, as he thinks he helped her break out of her shell.
• Once More, with Clarity: A throwaway skit of volume 1 has Karine accidentally get naked in front of John John, who was hanging out with her brother in their house. The prequel spin off reveals that it was actually Murphy dressed up as John John.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Vicky. Her full name is Victoria.
• Out of Focus: Karine only plays a secondary role in volume 6.
• Parental Favoritism: Vicky's parents have favored her older sister for years, going as far as leaving Vicky at French camp every summer where she was bullied even after losing weight and getting a makeover, and taking Rebecca with them on their extravagant vacations. Rebecca doesn't treat her well and her parents do little to deal with it. Things come to a head when their mother tries to give Rebecca a necklace she inherited after she gets into a relationship with their equally affluent neighbor's son. When it turns out that Vicky caught him on the rebound, they actually take the necklace from her and give it to Vicky, and start to spoil Vicky in ways that not even her sister enjoyed. Rebecca even breaks down when Vicky gets a car for her sweet sixteen, as she was only allowed to borrow the family car a small number of times.
• The Pete Best: In-Universe. In volume 7, Mégane replaces Vinko as the band's bassist.
• Private Tutor: Karine and Mégane, who are still in high school, get one when the Albinos move to the big city during the recording and release of their first album. They're too overworked to follow, however.
• Poverty Food: Semi Played for Laughs in Jenny's house. She is surprised when someone serves her hot food, as she is used to only eating frozen pizza (actually frozen when they're too hungry to dethaw it). A skit in volume 4 also has her spend the month's grocery budget on soda to win a contest, offering to feed her family on soda popsicles. Her baby brother also seems to be fed exclusively soda.
• Precious Puppy: An absolutely adorable one gets introduced as Jenny's pet... only to die horribly within the next five minutes due to her sheer idiocy. Yeesh.
• Progressively Prettier: Karine becomes notably cuter over the course of the series, even before her radical makeover at the end of volume 4 reveals that She Cleans Up Nicely. To paraphrase Word of God, she was never ugly to being with, just awkward and unlucky in the puberty lottery of what grows at what speed.
• Put on a Bus:
  • Rather than have his secret exposed, John John opts to leave school at the end of the third volume. After he leaves, the readers (though not the characters, apart from Karine) finally find out what he looked like underneath his helmet ans why he never took it off. He is in fact two people... Conjoined twins, to be presice. His twin brother is a second head stuck to the left side of his own head.
  • After giving up on getting Karine back, Dan decides to go live with his father in New York at the end of the fifth volume.
• Pygmalion Plot: In the seventh book, Albin's ex reveals to Karine that Albin has a habit of dating an insecure girl then turning her into a goth and that Karine is #12.
• Really Gets Around: Jenny... and to a lesser extent Vicky, though not for lack of trying.
• Repetitive Name: John John. Even though there are technically two of them, who gives their children the exact same name? Talk about extreme Twin Theme Naming.
• Riches to Rags: Vicky and her family starting volume 7.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: Vicky and Jenny (and possibly Dan) about Albin being wrong for Karine.
• Sarcasm-Blind: Jenny, much to Vicky's frustration, always takes everything she's told completely literally.
• Sarcastic Confession: Albin loves giving these. It remains to be seen how much of them are actually true.
• Shameless Fanservice Girl: Both Vicky and Jenny, who play up their sexiness and dress in skimpy, revealing clothes for attention. We also see the tendency in both their sisters, though with VERY different results: Vicky's older sister, though, who whenever she shows up in the comic has a tendency to be just in her underwear and proudly displays as much of her body as she can get away with, is kind of like a Character Exaggeration of Vicky herself, but Jenny's younger sister Jenna is thirteen at most and her attempts at looking sexy and presenting herself as older than she is comes across more as Troubling Unchildlike Behavior.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Many early strips have something good about to happen to Karine, only for Vicky and Jenny to sabotage it at the last second, intentionally or not.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Once Karine decides to stop being a victim, she changes her looks, this time without the sabotaging input of her "friends". The result is a net improvement.
• Sherlock Scan: Albin is good at figuring people out. But not good enough to tell his best friend is a murderous Knight Templar.
• Significant Haircut:
  • At the end of volume 4, Karine dyes her hair black and starts slowly growing it out.
  • In volume 8, Jenny shaves off all of her luscious red hair for a charity event in a failed attempt to win Hugo's respect back. It takes her a while, but she eventually leans into it.
• The Sociopath: Mélanie and Albin both show signs of being this. Unlike Vicky and Jenny, it's not played for laughs.
• Sorry, I'm Gay: Dieudonné turns Vicky down for this reason. Funnily, it turns out Vicky isn't straight either.
• Spoiled Brat: Both Vicky and her sister count, but her sister is far worse. They're both very materialistic due to their affluent upbringing, but for many summers Vicky was dropped off at French camp while her sister got to join their parents on vacations to exotic locales. When Vicky manages to earn their favor for a change, even getting a car for her sweet sixteen, her sister actually breaks down crying simply because she was only allowed to borrow the family car a few times when she first started driving.
• Statuesque Stunner: Karine becomes this after she gets her makeover and stops slouching.
• Stepford Smiler: Jenny's Hidden Depths. As a skit from the prequel explores, she'll sing and smile her way through her Horrible Housing, Empty Fridge, Empty Life, Alcoholic Parent and being Promoted to Parent, but break down when her favorite star's new album is delayed. Consciously or not, she hangs on so hard to the superficial things because they're all she has.
• The Tease:
  • While Jenny doesn't mind putting her money where her mouth is when it comes to boys (as long as they're at least decent-looking), Vicky is fond of promising stuff like dates and kisses and not following up.
  • Mégane is very aware of the effect she has on Vicky and loves nothing like toying with her.
• Teens Are Monsters: In full effect, especially in the first album, and generally played for laughs.
• Temporary Bulk Change: Happens to Jenny when Vicky takes her to an all-you-can-eat place in an effort to make Jenny fat so the guy they're fighting over will date her instead. When Jenny starts gaining mass unusually fast, Vicky can't believe it. It turns out she was just having an allergic reaction.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: Not everything that happens to Karine is horribly depressing; her early relationships with Dan and then Albin make her happy, and Jenny and Vicky are capable of giving her a true Friendship Moment every once in a while.
• Too Much Information: In Murphy's first scene in volume 6, he tells Vicky he was thinking about her last night while finishing his box of Kleenex.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: In volume 8 Vicky takes about 20. First she slowly ruins Jenny's social life by gaslighting her into thinking ruining her looks will make Hugo like her again, to make things worse ruining Jenny's reputation was only a by product of the actual goal of making her fall deep into depression, at one point even jokingly giving Jenny the number of the suicide prevention hotline. It's not just Jenny Vicky is after either, Karine's band becoming more and more famous angers her to almost the same degree, to the point she actually prays to god to ruin it, and tries to spread malicious rumors about the band to hurt their rep. The only thing that prevents Vicky from being a full on villain is that ultimately none of her plans worked, Jenny being ostracised allowed her to rethink her life and what was really important to her allowing her to finally be able to see what Hugo was mad about and really apologize, while Karine's band managed to whether the storm of its first album release and become even more successful.
• Toxic Friend Influence: Vicky is very clearly a poor influence on Jenny, who according to Karine Used to Be a Sweet Kid when they were little.
• Trauma Conga Line: Jenny, of all people gets subjected to this in Volume 8, courtesy of Vicky. The latter sabotages her trademark appearance, making Jenny believe this will make Hugo interested in her again. Not only does Hugo gets even more upset she's missing the point of his rejection, she loses all her fanboys immediately and her family now shuns her, to the point of refusing to be seen with Jenny. Since Jenny has no friend besides Vicky and Karine, who is away with her band, she ends up incredibly isolated and miserable, so much that she is at one point seen asking Murphy for advice on Hugo.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Jenny's little sister Jenna wears tops with things like "sex bomb" and "Porn Star" written on them and is more interested in high school guys than boys her own age. She is only eleven or twelve.
  • Sadly justified by the horrible condition she lives and her two inept "caretakers", forcing her to grow up too fast and become the "adult" of the household. It clear from her dialogue that the situation takes a toll on her.
• Vague Age: Albin. He's out of high school, and started pulling the makeover trick at the earliest in his late teens - and Karine, who has been dating him for several months at the time of the reveal of his backstory, is the 12th girl he strings along this way. It's one of the reasons Karine's parents dislike him - notably they don't like that he would serve alcohol to "an underage girl", implying that he's not a minor himself. It's also unclear whether they're having sex, as the conversation they have about it at one point turns out to be a gag about doing chores together. It's one of the elements that make reader wonder how positive a character he really is.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: Jenny's boyfriend Jean-Franky never wear a shirt, even in an high class restaurant.
• What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?:
  • Karine accuses Vicky of not knowing what it is like to fall in love. Turns out Karine was right, if not correct on the reason.
  • Albin has very cynical views on love as a concept, believing that what people call love is only the realization of selfish desire: he claims Karine "loves" him because he's helping her grow in confidence, while he "loves" her because he likes to feel useful. At the end of the seventh volume, after his manipulations are revealed, he tells Karine that she made him see the truth and that his feelings for her as deeper than he knew... but only so she won't dump him and break the band apart.
• Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?: Really Albin's parent, that's the name you're giving to your albino child? Well, turns out it's not, they actually called him Alain... except their family name is Delon.
• With Friends Like These...: Vicky, and to an extent Jenny towards Karine.
• Writers Cannot Do Math: The climax of Volume 7 takes place at Vicky's Sweet Sixteen. In Volume 5, Karine mentions that it took her five years to realize how toxic Vicky was after they met in middle school - which, even assuming that Vicky is by far the youngest of the trio, would make them very precocious eleven-year-olds. Meanwhile, the prequel spin off establishes that Jenny and Vicky met when they were twelve, at least a couple of years before Vicky and Karine met, which does fit the art better.
• World of Jerkass: Finding a genuine nice person in this series is a herculean task, considering that the majority of the characters are alpha bitches, Bitch in Sheep's Clothing, Abusive Parents, morally-divisive murderers, greedy producers or musicians, or seem like nice people but their Hidden Depths reveal a much darker side...
• Wrong-Name Outburst: Near the end of volume 6 when Karine is yelling at Vicky, telling her how in love she is with Albin, she accidentally says Dan instead of Albin.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: In volume 6 things finally seem to be going well for Vicky as she gains a boyfriend and her parents' respect, but toward the end not only is she almost murdered, she also realises she's trapped in a loveless relationship and the one she truly have feelings for is her boyfriend's sister.

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