Sylvain Runberg

What a great surprise!

We've all seen innumerable Italian flicks about bush people eating silly adventurers, but this little gem managed to put a new spin on the cannibal genre, in making it about suave jet-setters doing the eating. Think American Psycho with an appetite, and you've got an idea of where this is going. And with such an outrageous concept, you'd think the story would easily slip into involuntary comedy, but the storytelling actually manages to make it both believable and show more engaging all the way till the end.

Highly recommended! show less

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 show more 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! show less

Second volume of Ablaze's wonderful take on Conan stories.

First story takes us to the ever contested parts of the world that matches today's crossroads between Iran, Pakistan, China and Afghanistan. Conan, who established himself as chief of local brigand clans gets sucked into local political power plays that will bring him into conflict with dark sorcerer who enjoys a role of a king maker for a highest bidder.

Art is interesting, at times when author draws action scenes or character show more surprise, it is obvious inspiration is Manga or Korean variation of it. As is case with lots of Manga styles from the west this tends to create lots of sketchy art, so many lines that drawing loses its fullness. But in overall it is good, lots of details and when action kicks in it is amazing. I think that black and white approach here might work better. But again, I enjoy black and white comics in general so might be biased :)

Second story is famous story of Frost Giants Daughter. It is breath taking. Art, coloring, composition, everything is magnificent. Again, this being more adult version of stories sexual energy accumulates and it is visible. From the way Conan eyes this spirit, the way she teases him, her confidence that Conan is just yet another buffoon to be sacrificed to her father, playful exchange between the two that has such a serious and deadly undertones that Conan is not aware of at the beginning.

Again, art is so great that lots of frames would work without a single uttered word from any party. Conan here is such a powerful creature that during the final fight scenes I was truly expecting him to jump out of the pages. Spirit's fear when she realizes that Conan is not a person to be trifled with (presentation how fear starts to grow in her as she sees Conan is uncontrollable and how stressed and afraid she is on last pages after her failure to kill Conan (fear from Conan himself and definitely her father who lost his only two sons due to her scheming) - artist managed to capture every emotion, it is incredible, no frame requires any additional textual explanation) and Conan's charge at the Frost Giant! Epic! This is currently my favorite story from the two volumes from Ablaze.

Excellent book. Highly recommended to all fans of hero fantasy. Cannot wait for volume 3! show less

Steig Larsson’s Millennium: The Graphic Novel Trilogy features adaptations written by Sylvain Runberg with art by José Homs and Manolo Carot, translated by Rachel Zerner. In The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Runberg fairly faithfully follows Stieg Larsson’s novel with relatively minor changes. For example, Runberg alters Mikael Blomkvist’s backstory, so that Harriet Vanger was his babysitter when he was young, though Blomkvist had forgotten that by the time The Girl with the Dragon show more Tattoo begins. He also includes a flashback to Mikael first meeting Erika Berger in which Blomkvist states that his journalistic interest “is the resurgence of neo-Nazi groups in Sweden,” thereby explicitly making the character an avatar for series creator Stieg Larsson, who researched right-wing extremism as a journalist. This departs from Larsson’s own description of Blomkvist as having “his professional life dedicated to revealing and reporting suspicious transactions, specifically in the field of banking and business.” Lastly, Runbery includes brief glimpses of Lisbeth Salander’s sister, Camilla, that differ from the way David Lagercrantz portrayed her in his novel continuations of the Millennium series. Homs’ art relies heavily on caricature, with distinct and animated facial expressions for the characters, though he often achieves this by portraying their heads and hands as proportionally larger than normal.

Where Runberg made minor changes in his first volume, his adaptation of The Girl Who Played with Fire follows the story faithfully, only condensing material in order to make it fit the original two issues in which it was published. Runberg features another appearance from Camilla, both in flashback to her and Lisebeth’s youth as well as in the present. This largely departs from Larsson’s novels, in which Camilla only appears in flashbacks. Runberg switches artists for this second volume and Manolo Carot’s art in The Girl Who Played with Fire closely resembles John Romita, Jr.’s art, particularly in the shape of his characters’ faces. His portrayal of Lisbeth, Mikael, Erika, and Plague follow Homs’ style from the first volume, but he departs in depicting other returning characters, like Miriam Wu and Christer Malm. While the style works well on its own, it can be strange to see the change when reading these all together.

Runberg’s adaptation of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest begins on a radically different note from the novel, with Lisbeth hiding out at the home of a surgeon Plague knows rather than under arrest and recuperating in hospital as in Larsson’s book. Further, Ronald Niedermann, Salander’s half-brother, attacks Camilla and her family at home since he does not know where to find Lisbeth. Zalachenko, her father, still pressures members of the Section, a secret group within Säpo, to continue covering up his crimes as they have since the Cold War while Dragan Armansky helps Mikael to reach out to Säpo Constitutional Protection Director Torsten Edklinth. Erika still takes over as editor-in-chief at Svenska Morgon-Posten, where an anonymous e-mailer sends her and her colleagues explicit messages. The trial further involves Camilla as a witness for the defense, while Monica Figuerola’s role is largely minimized. The Section also destroys the Millennium offices in an attempt to kill Blomkvist and Berger. Some other events of the dénouement are changed, but the conclusion follows the novel and ends on the same note. In this volume, Homs and Carot work together on the art, thereby creating a unified aesthetic for the finale.

This adaptation differs from Denise Mina, Leonardo Manco, and Andrea Mutti’s adaptation of the trilogy for DC’s Vertigo imprint that first appeared between 2012 – 2015, primarily in that these comics were produced for the Franco-Belgian comic book market and both the tone and style differ from their American counterparts. For one thing, they show less violence, relying more on implied violence than explicit portrayals. Also, Runberg’s adaptations stike more of a noir tone and his artists used more de-saturated colors to reflect that tone. Following the conclusion of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, Runberg continued the story in The Girl Who Danced with Death, featuring art by Bélen Ortego and not following David Lagercrantz’s novel continuations of the Millennium series. For all their differences, fans of Larsson’s novel will enjoy these adaptations, which are artfully done and have their strengths. show less