written by Ralph Macchio
illustrated by Bill Sienkiewicz
Part One
from Marvel Super Special No. 36, 1984
Strange as it may seem, the novel Dune has never appeared as a comic book. The closest it has come to a comic book incarnation was in 1984, when Marvel comics produced a 64-page comic adaptation of the movie under the Marvel 'Super Special' imprint, which was designed to showcase comic book adaptations of feature films.
The comic book adaptation was written by Ralph Macchio and illustrated by Bill Sienkiewicz, with colors by Christine Scheele and lettering by Joe Rosen.
As the 'Super Special' adaptations went, Dune was one of the more challenging ones. To begin with, David Lynch's film sought to condense a 500+ page novel into a feature film with a 136 minute running time, which in turn presented a challenge to Ralph Macchio in terms of adapting the material into a 64-page comic. But Macchio did a god job, staying true to the film's plotting, which differs a bit from the novel.
Sienkiewicz's art is serviceable, relying on an expressionistic design that had to accommodate quite a bit of text boxes and dialogue balloons.The Dieselpunk stylings of the movie are absent, but in fairness, Sienkiewicz was probably working from an early-draft script when he took on the assignment.
There is no getting around the fact that, if you are not already familiar with the novel, both the film and the comic adaptation are not going to be very accessible. That said, this comic adaptation is in some ways much more easily grasped than the novel.
I'm posting the entirety of the Dune Super Special in two parts. Part Two will follow this post.
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