Dragon Tattoo fans i'm huge fan of the this franchise while i've not read all of the books outside of the first one I have seen both the original Swedish films and both American ones. The one thing i've not done however is review the comic book adaptation of the first first book and well that's going to change right now and i'm going to warn some of the images chosen in this review might not be suitable for young readers so here is my review of the DC Comics version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
Now in case you didn't know the plot of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is in the mid sixties a young girl goes missing and her uncle believes one of his relatives killed her and so in present day hires a disgraced journalist and a hacker to find out who did it. Honestly for me to give me thoughts on the plot I would also have to dissect the mystery of the story so for once i'm going to give my thoughts on both later on in the review.
Now there is actually two comic books based on this story out there there's one published by DC Comics and another published by Titan Comics and as the name of this review will tell you i'm doing a review based on the DC Comics version of the story. This book is so freaking dark and I think for this story and this world that honestly works and it's one of the many , many , many things that the recent Sony movie got wrong.
Unlike regular comics this was released as a two volume graphic novel which I think was the right choice to make because if they were adapting it in regular comic book form they'd still be releasing issues. This book is very dialog heavy and when I say dialog heavy I really do mean it there's a ton of dialog on every single page and alot of it is important to the plot and that's something that I can see putting alot of people of because I myself skipped alot of it but I could afford to because i've seen both film versions alot.
There's one scene which I hope to god gets included in every adaptation of the story because of how crucial of a scene it is to the character of Lisbeth. If you've seen the above picture and you've seen either the original Swedish film or the American remake then you'll know the scene in question and i'm glad that it's in this comic book version of the story but there are a few things changed like you don't get to see Lisbeth lay down the terms of his release which while not important is still a cool thing to see.
The writer for the book is Denise Mina who would also work on the other two books by the original author Stig Larsson as well as A Sickness in the Family and I have to say that even tho she's adapting work from a great author Denise really does her best to manage this really complicated plot line. The artwork was done by Leonardo Manco and Andrea Mutti now I have no idea who drew what but the overall quality of the artwork in the book is of a high standerd.
Now seems like a good time to talk about the mystery and the story because like I said before there one in the same in this case. I thought that the mystery was honestly really well told even tho i've seen this story dozens of times before it still gets me interested and I like the fact that the author of this adaptation was able to find a balance between giving you clues as to what really's going on and letting the characters breathe and the fact that there's also kind of a mini mystery added as well makes things more interesting at least in my opinion.
Now depending on where your seeing this review you'll have seen my review of The Girl In The Spider's Web and will thus no that I hated how they treated Lisbeth in that story. For me tho nothing beats how she's treated in the original trilogy of books and films because she's treated not as someone who's a female action hero but as someone who has issues getting along with men due to her backstory and she'll go to any length she deems necessary to get revenge on them which is what shew does in this story.
In all honesty Lisbeth is my favourite literary heroine because of the fact that she doesn't take shi* from anyone. She's the kind of person who'll tell you to fu*k off if you annoy her and is somehow still the best at what she does she is everything Rey from Star Wars wishes she could be because while Rey pretends to empower women Lisbeth does it just by being herself and I can't believe that when people bring up strong female characters they don't even mention her.
To say that this is a mature comic book would be a freaking understatement heck even tho there's a lot of mature images used in this post there was alot more that I could have used but chose not to due to how mature they are. Heck even in what I think is a famous scene I only use the end of that scene because it's the only image that i really could use but here's the thing alot of those more mature scenes also add to the overall horror not only of the world that this book is set in but also due to the story.
Overall if you love the Swedish film or the American film or even the original book then you'll love this version of the story however if none of those grabbed you then don't expect this story to grab. Is it a perfect book no i've even listed some of the faults that I found in the book but it's damn freaking close so it gets an 8.5 out of 10 from me.