Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy to become very graphic novel

DC Comics signs Glaswegian crime writer Denise Mina to adapt Girl with the Dragon Tattoo novels for comic format.
Stieg Larsson's graphic adapter Denise Mina. Photograph: Murdo Macleod
Super-tough bisexual computer hacker Lisbeth Salander, star of Stieg Larsson's bestselling Millenium trilogy, is set to become even spikier after Glaswegian crime novelist Denise Mina gives her the graphic novel treatment.
Mina has been chosen by Larsson's literary estate to adapt the late Swedish novelist's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and its sequels The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest into six graphic novels for DC Comics. The author, whose latest novel The End of the Wasp Season was shortlisted for the Gold Dagger award, said she had nearly finished adapting the first book, with the first volume to be out next March. The illustrator is Leonardo Manco, with whom Mina has previously collaborated on the Hellblazer comics.
"The estate has given me free rein and I can change what I want … I think they think that enough people have read the books, and anyway, Larsson really loved comics," she said. "I'm not changing that much [but] I think for most women there are problematic aspects of the story ... Lisbeth Salander is just a brilliant character. She is the main event for me. But she is a survivor of sexual abuse and I think every so often [Larsson] doesn't realise how frightened she is most of the time. I wanted to put those bits in."
Salander is described by Larsson as "a pale, anorexic young woman who had hair as short as a fuse, and a pierced nose and eyebrows. She had a wasp tattoo about two centimetres long on her neck, a tattooed loop around the biceps of her left arm and another around her left ankle … A dragon tattoo on her left shoulder blade … she was a natural redhead, but she dyed her hair raven black." The hacker is set to be played by Rooney Mara in David Fincher's film adaptation of the first novel, out this month.
"I don't think she would spend so much time on her make-up [as she does in the book]," said Mina. "I think she wants to be invisible. I think she looks odd because she can't help it. She looks odd and very cool. And she's not going out with a woman because she can't find a man. I think she likes women and feels more comfortable with them. The gay relationship is very much an aside in the book – she's so fucked up she's going out with a girl – but I think the girlfriend is the main event."
Mina is no stranger to the kind of graphic violence portrayed in Larsson's novels, or to strong female characters. The End of the Wasp Season sets pregnant DS Alex Morrow on the case of the brutal murder of a young woman in Glasgow, while Mina's graphic novel A Sickness in the Family sees the Usher family die violently one by one.
The author has been getting up at five in the morning to complete the first adaptation in time for its March release date – but said that "it has been brilliant" adapting Larsson's work. "He wrote such a great story," she said. "And he truly understood what he was doing when he wrote a feminist crime novel."
Each title will be adapted into two graphic novels, with the Dragon Tattoo adaptation out in 2012 and the second and third novels to be adapted in 2013 and 2014. Dan DiDio, DC Entertainment co-publisher, has called the "intricate characters and stories" created by Larsson the "perfect match for the graphic novel format, where we can bring Lisbeth Salander to life in entirely new, visually compelling ways".

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