Maybe Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys: The Big Lie would have resonated for me a bit more if I’d ever read Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys. Instead, I’ve only ever seen their cover illustrations and imagined the sort of squeaky-clean peril they might get themselves into. I think, though, that I still wouldn’t have gotten much from this too-serious gritty reimagining of the classic teen mysteries.

The introduction to The Big Lie admits that it takes inspiration from the revelatory Afterlife With Archie, a series that thrillingly juxtaposes familiar Archie characters with zombie horror to great effect. The problem is that The Big Lie only suffers by comparison.

Where Archie subverts familiar characters and tropes without losing the essence of the originals, The Big Lie tells a dour modern-day noir that slaps Hardy and Drew names on bland, interchangeable characters. It isn’t subversive because there isn’t enough substance there to subvert.

Instead, it confuses a grim, serious tone with maturity, suffers from some serious holes in logic, and hangs it all on a boilerplate storyline about corrupt cops, drug dealers, and unexpected murderers. I didn’t care about or relate to any of the characters, and I also didn’t much like the art.

If I was going to write a modern noir update of the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boy mysteries, I think I would ground it in story where they’re all still crime-solving kids, but the mystery has higher stakes. You could still flash-forward and show them as adults, but the core has to be about something that happened when they were kids.

Although I do like the idea of rebooting classic stories from a fresh new angle, I can’t recommend The Big Lie. It misses the mark in so many ways and delivers something both bland and uninteresting.

Full disclosure: I received a free review copy from NetGalley. This review was originally published at Full of Words. ( )

Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys have been around since the 1920’s in books, movies, TV and comics. In the beginning their antics were aimed towards a young audience but over the years their audience got older and some of their stories were aimed at an older audience. This brings us to the present day and a new limited edition comic series from Dynamite comics. Nancy Drew And The Hardy Boys: The Big Lie is written by Anthony Del Coy with art by Wertr Dell’Edera and shows the characters as you’ve never seen them before.

Frank and Joe Hardy had everything going for them, good part-time jobs, nice girlfriends and the respect of everyone in the town of Bayport. Everything starts to fall apart though when their father and police detective Fenton is accused of corruption. The whole town turns against them and their father commits suicide, or so it seems. After an investigation the police suspect that Frank and Joe murdered their father. The police not have all the proof they need but in the court of public opinion, the boys are already guilty. Luckily for them Nancy Drew doesn’t believe that and has a plan to prove their innocence.

What drew me to this graphic novel was the cover which was drawn by Faye Dalton. I’ve been wanting to know more about the Noir and Hard boiled mystery genre and this book seemed to be a good fit. I wasn’t disappointed either, I haven’t read any Hardy Boys books since I was a kid but that didn’t matter, you don’t need to know the characters well to enjoy this book. From the opening pages you know that these aren’t the characters that you grew up with. Bayport is a dark place filled with crime, drugs and more than one dark secret. I loved how this book goes back and looks at the Hardy’s family and we see that there were a few criminals in the bloodline and the Hardy Boy’s father may have been as corrupt as the public thinks.

I also liked hearing about Nancy’s background and how she finds out that her dad has his own dark secrets. I loved how Nancy was shown in this book, when she finds out details on the death of her mother she decides to do what teenagers are supposed to do which is party. She quickly finds out that partying isn’t for her and goes on to do what she does best, which is solve mysteries. We get to see Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys solving mysteries as kids, then as moody manipulating teenagers and I enjoyed how the book shows the kids changing through the years.

No one is what they appear and everyone has a secret or two and The Hardy Boys have their own ideas of what’s right and wrong and fight quite a bit. There are a lot of great twists and turns to this book and I never saw the ending coming. Also the art is amazing and adds a lot to the story making the dark mood to the plot even darker. This book was a fun read with the art and story firing together on all cylinders. If you love graphic novels, this one is a must read. ( )