Runberg's graphic novel adaptation of the Stieg Larsson's books ended in Volume 3. He has written his own continuation of the series, with two plots. The Swedish secret police (Sapa) is illegally collecting information about private citizens all over Europe while Lisbeth Salander and her hacker buddies are attempting to break into the system and expose this massive abuse of political power. Meanwhile, Millenium magazine is investigating a radical conservative politician who is a dangerous threat to the ruling government, and wants to gain control of the database too.

I liked this, especially the new graphic artist, Belén Ortega, whose work is less dark than his predecessors. At least, Mikael is finally decent looking in this installment since he is purported to be such a ladies man. ( )

Sylvain Runberg’s The Girl Who Danced with Death continues his adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy featuring Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist with art by Bélen Ortega. The story does not follow David Lagercrantz’s novel continuations of the Millennium series. Where Lagercrantz’s novels extensively featured Lisbeth’s sister, Camilla, as running her own criminal syndicate, Runberg departed from Larsson’s novels to portray her as living a happy, normal domestic life during the events of the Millennium Trilogy. In the first three adaptations, Runberg also spent more time portraying Blomkvist as working against extremist right-wing organizations, effectively making him an avatar for Larsson whose own journalistic work exposed these organizations in Sweden and setting up a plot point for this sequel. Finally, where Hacker Republic itself played a relatively minor role in Larsson’s original novels, Runberg spent more time with them in order to foreshadow this story. While José Homs and Manolo Carot worked on the art for the previous trilogy, here Ortega offers his own take on the characters that shows evidence of a manga influence.

The story begins with Mikael Blomkvist investigating an alt-right politician for Millennium magazine. The politician has used dog-whistle tactics to appeal to racists and misogynists, securing his rise to power on a tide of populist bigotry. Meanwhile, Lisbeth Salander and the members of Hacker Republic are trying to hack into Säpo’s new datacenter, which is collecting information on every citizen in Sweden. They further learn that, through a program called Hugin (named after Odin’s raven that reported to him on the doings in the world), Säpo can collect information about people around the world in a manner that rivals the NSA. Unfortunately, a group calling itself Sparta begins targeting members of Hacker Republic. Plague has been conducting his own research into Mark Borrow, a figure somewhere between Rollo Tomassi and Neil Strauss with ties to Sparta and their leader, Christian Dunker, a Roger Ailes-type who’s organizing everything in order to buy an island where he can rule tax free and elevate white men above everyone else. One-by-one, Sparta kidnaps the members of Hacker Republic while attacking Blomkvist for his investigation. The action comes to a head with another constitutional crisis for Sweden, much like The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, but with issues far more relevant to modern readers.

Since Runberg adapted the previous three stories in the Millennium Trilogy, he was able to incorporate elements that link it with this continuation he wrote. Due to that, there’s a great deal more narrative coherence than that offered by David Lagercrantz’s sequel novels to Larsson’s original trilogy. The story also feels much truer to the themes of power, corruption, and systemic abuse that Larsson explored than Lagercrantz’s novels, which, while well-written, were more generic Scandinavian crime novels. Fans of Lisbeth Salander will find plenty to like in The Girl Who Danced with Death! ( )

this is a European graphic novel, featuring an original screenplay set just after the trilogy. it focuses on a lot of hard-edged action, centered on Lisbeth Salander, partnering with journalist Blomkvist on a political investigation that affects them both and draws in the magazine Millennium, the collective Hacker Republic, and various security agencies familiar to readers of the trilogy. an excellent clean script, illustrated in a metal style that is true to Lisbeth's origins. ( )