Random Box of Comics: Dune

I was looking for a book.  This happens from time to time.  I don’t have enough shelf space for all the books.  So some still live in boxes. Searching around, I could not find the book, so I started looking in other places – like my comic book short boxes.  I have been known to use those for other things.  Sure enough, I found what I was looking for, but I also found some other stuff.

Like some pretty random comics.  These are so random, I never bothered to bag em.

I took some pics using my iPhone – sorry if the quality isn’t fantastic.

Dune (film adaptation from Marvel – 1985)

In 1984, David Lynch adapted Frank Herbert’s Dune for the big screen. Epic in scale, people are mixed as to whether or not it hit the mark.  I think it did better in the video market than it did at the box office.  Regardless, it earned a comic book tie-in via the mighty Marvel, which encompassed 3 issues and came out in April of 1985.

The comic followed the movie, not the novel – that’s important to remember.  Marvel did a lot of these back in the day (or, I remember it that way).

One of the things that draws a lot of television writers to comics these days, is the fact you don’t have to worry about an F/X budget.  You can pretty much do whatever the artist can draw.  This could lead to a wonderful comic.  Unfortunately, that was not the case with the Dune adaptation.  Again, they were adapting the film, so I doubt there was much freedom and that comes through in a lot of the interior art (the covers are quite nice).

The Test

An important scene in the movie is when the Bene Gesserit tests Paul using the box and the Gom Jabbar. In the movie, they do all these cool hand melty F/X STUFF. In the comic, where they could really do something cool art-wise, we get the panels above, which are, quite frankly, lackluster and sad.

Another area where they could have shined was with the great worms.  Alas, I don’t think they ended up very exciting either.  Here’s the last panel from the 1st book.  This ties to the scene in the movie where the Duke lands to save the workers mining the spice, and the great worm comes up from beneath them to destroy the Spice Harvester.

They did secure the rights to the actor’s likenesses, so at least the characters look the same.  Like this gentleman you just might recognize:

It's Guinevere's father from Excalibur! No, wait - it's Jean Luc Picard...

Man. The iPhone takes all blurry photos.

Anyway.  Book 2 looks like this:

There’s always this thing with the older books, where the covers look so much better than the inside art, and these books are no different.  You see the Baron looking quite like his movie-self on the cover above.

Here he is inside the book:

Almost like they did take some liberties with the Baron’s face.  Idaknow.

Again, the great worms don’t look so great in my humble opinion:

Maybe I’m being too hard on the worms.  I’ll let you decide.

In this shot, Paul get’s his Fremen-Blue eyes and I wish they popped off the page:

And when he drinks the water of life, I feel like they could have done so much more.

Oh well.  What are you gonna do?  It is what it is.

Book 3’s cover:

And, in the end, Paul takes control.  The Sleeper has Awakened.

"And how can this be? For he -is- the Kwisatz Haderach!"

Given the source material, this was an ok adaptation.  Makes me wonder if anyone has ever done an adaptation straight from the books and not a copy of a copy, so to speak…

huh.

~P