The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo: Millennium #1 –
Titan Comics
Written by Sylvain Runberg
Art by Jose Homs
Translated by Rachel Zerner
Letters by Phillipe Glogowski
Fans of the novels by Stieg Larsson have always been curious to see The Girl With The Drago Tattoo stories come to life. The movies have become a reality, but now there is even more. This time Lisbeth comes to the comics world in this new adaptation from Titan Comics.
The book follows the very familiar story of journalist Mikael Blomvist, a disgraced journalist that has taken a job to investigate the disappearance of a member of the Vanger family and chronicle the family’s history. From another angle, we have Lisbeth Salander who is a computer hacker who is investigating Blomvist himself and the possibility that he was set up in his recent conviction. One investigation definitely goes more smoothly than the other, but there are certainly scars on both sides. Blomvist gets a bit more wrapped up in the Vanger family than he had initially planned. We also see Lisbeth’s situation change after a tragedy in her life. When I say worse, I mean a lot worse. We also get flashes of something else going on, and a secret that is clearly not ready to be revealed yet. When Blomvist sees his two worlds collide, Lisbeth just tries to hang on to hers. The end of this first issue sees things trending towards an eventual meeting of the two stories, and a big step forward in the Vanger family disappearance.
With an over sized, 64 page first issue, the book definitely gives you our money’s worth. Problem is, I’m not sure that was the correct decision here. While the extra pages allowed for a lot of background, the story seemed to drag on at points, especially when following Blomvist. If you are a fan of the books and/or movies, it may drag on even more for you. You’re not getting much original content here, given the same basic story and principle players involved. That doesn’t mean there are no redeeming qualities to this book. If you don’t know the story at all, it does have good intrigue and stories about an eccentric family always play pretty well. You’ll also get plenty of information on these characters, so you won’t be lost if you’re not familiar with the books. This is a tough book to rate based on those two factors. The art is good on the interior, but the cover definitely pops more than the rest of of issue. I would actually like to see the next issue become more of a regular sized story, which should actually allow the story to pick up the pace and have more of a sense of urgency. If you’re true fan of the books though, this would merely be a chance for you to experience a familiar story in another medium.
RATING: PICK UP