Kevin J. Anderson and Brian Herbert have been friends and creative partners for decades now, expanding on the world of Dune in different ways. And now Abrams has released Dune: The Graphic Novel – The Complete 3 Boxed Set, collecting the complete tale first told by Frank Herbert, now in comic book form.
“Brian and I both think the original DUNE is probably the best science fiction novel ever written,” Anderson told Comic Book Club over email. “I myself have read it 28 times. When we adapt it to graphic format, we decided from the very beginning that we weren’t going to ‘adapt’ by changing everything for our own sensibilities. How do you improve on DUNE? Thus, this is a scene-for-scene adaptation in comic format, told exactly the way Frank wrote it.”
To find out more about the creation of the volumes, read on!
Comic Book Club: First of all: how you Dune?
Kevin J. Anderson: Well, I’ve heard that one about as often as people come up to me in a MATRIX voice and say “Miiiiister Andersonnnn”
Second of all, and more seriously, what do you think is the lasting appeal of Dune? Particularly now with your comics, the movies, etc, it seems like there’s been a real resurgence in the past few years.
DUNE was a real ground-breaker in the genre of science fiction, the equivalent of what Lord of the Rings is to Fantasy. It changed everything. Suddenly, this was a book that raised the bar for an entire genre, not just a quick, shallow adventure but a richly layered epic full of worldbuilding, with politics, ecology, religion, sociology, as well as a great adventure. And somehow, Frank Herbert wrote a story that keeps being relevant in new ways to each generation of readers.
You’ve extensively worked with Brian Herbert, on the prequel series, as well as this… What works about the partnership?
First off, Brian and I are best of friends and have been for nearly 30 years. We’ve worked intensely together, writing something like five million words together. And we really enjoy the exchange of ideas, the brainstorming, building upon each other’s suggestions. We’ve done 21 Dune books in collaboration as well as our HELLHOLE trilogy. And I think that partnership works so well because we both have such enormous respect for Frank Herbert’s original masterpiece.
When you’re tackling an adaptation like this, it’s not as simple as slapping sentences on a page… When do you feel you can or can’t change from the original dialogue, to make it work for the comics?
That’s one of the key points that makes the Abrams graphic novel adaptation so special. Brian and I both think the original DUNE is probably the best science fiction novel ever written. I myself have read it 28 times. When we adapt it to graphic format, we decided from the very beginning that we weren’t going to “adapt” by changing everything for our own sensibilities. How do you improve on DUNE? Thus, this is a scene-for-scene adaptation in comic format, told exactly the way Frank wrote it.
But of course, comics is a different medium than a prose novel, so we can’t keep every word. However, the graphic format also gives us extra tools, because the art can convey so much without paragraphs of description. We tried to keep the real essence of the novel, while also presenting it in a compelling graphic format.
As one of the pull quotes notes, a lot of Dune is political maneuvering… So how do you make sure from the script perspective that this is visually compelling for a reading audience?
You mean just looking at politics isn’t visually compelling? Maybe that’s why there isn’t a CSPAN graphic novel! The story of DUNE is so gripping, with the character interactions as well as big spectacular battles, chases, sandworm rides, the political undertones are integral to the story. I think it comes across well.
A second important layer of DUNE is how Frank Herbert wove in the character’s inner thoughts and motivations beneath what they were saying out loud (which might be completely contradictory). In comics format, we could use the actual spoken words as dialog, while we could put their real inner thoughts as captions. It’s very effective.
Looking back over the three volumes, how do you feel about it as a set? What’s different for you about it being complete in this fashion through Abrams, or is it impossible to separate yourself from the day to day work you put into this?
The novel DUNE is broken into three “books” and we knew from the beginning that the only way to do justice to this story was to present the graphic novel in three volumes as well, again following the novel scene-for-scene. Like Lord of the Rings, this isn’t really a “trilogy” per se, but a huge epic split into three parts. I’m not sure your wrist would be able to handle holding the entire massive thing on one volume!
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