Comic Review: Dune: House Atreides #1

Dune: House Atreides #1

BOOM! Studios

Writer: Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson

Art: Dev Pramanik, Alex Guimarães & Ed Dukeshire

A few years ago I was introduced to the world of Dune through the 1984 David Lynch movie. I was mesmerized by the world building it did as well as the aesthetics presented in the film. However, I must admit, once I learned about the absolute tomes I’d have to read to get the full picture, I settled for getting a taste of different media. Now it’s time for comics.

The series’ first issue follows a collection of plots. We start with Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, on Arrakis, checking on a Spice deposit when an event called a Spice blow causes the deposit to collapse. The comic then jumps to Kaitain, with, Emperor Elrood notifying Planetologist Pardot Kynes he is to head to Arrakis and learn everything they need to know about the eternal mystery of the desert planet. There is a segment briefly following young Leto Atreides who is to go to Ix and learn more about the imperium. There is yet another subplot following the son of the Emperor plotting a plan to slowly assassinate him.

As it may seem from the summarized plot, the writing is not really good. I can’t really say how much this is to be attributed to the writers or the decision to make this comic a prequel (especially to the upcoming movie) but there’s clearly more than the two writers could properly handle. Dune is a rich universe with a ton of stories to tell, but to cram them all in a single issue right away was, in my opinion, an easy mistake to avoid. The writers get the job done, I guess. They do seem to rely on weird exposition spoken out loud about the characters’ past or literally about what’s happening on page which gets really annoying really quickly. Not to mention some weird dialogues altogether.

However bad the plot or the writing may have been, the art does compensate quite a bit. Pramanik’s style is friendly and a bit cute but manages to impose seriousness and darkness whenever needed. His motion depiction is phenomenal placing the reader in the middle of the action with a general blur on the panel associated with motion lines. The artist’s anatomy can be odd in some cases. Guimarães’ colors are equally cool. Lighting is outright perfect among the sunny environments and sci-fi computer panels. I adored how the shield covered Paulus Atreides is colored, with a precisely measured tint of blue without getting in the way of the other colors for the character. The lettering is alright. The dialogue boxes have a clear color definition so it’s easy to track if it’s a character card or an inner dialogue, for instance.

As someone who was excited to see how Dune would end up in a comic format, I have to say I was a little bit disappointed. Although the artwork was, indeed really good, it got obfuscated by the crazy amount of plots and just plain bad writing which violates the pinnacle rule of visual storytelling: show, don’t tell. I hope this series eventually picks up seeing as Dune has tremendous potential and I’d love to see it done properly on comics eventually.