Dune House Atreides #12

Dune House Atreides #12

BOOM! Studios 2021

Written by Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson

Illustrated by Dev Pramanik

Coloured by Alex Guimarães

Lettered by Ed Dukeshire

Now the 81st Padishah Emperor of the Known Universe and imbued with the entire power of the Imperium, Shaddam will decide the fate of newly crowned Duke Leto Atreides.

But his decision will inadvertently cement the genocidal hatred of Baron Harkonnen for House Atreides!

First thing I noticed with this issue is that the interiors don’t look like I remember from the rest of the series, they are much more simple as if Dev wasn’t able to handle such a long project and that’s disappointing because up until now they’ve been rockstar good. Thankfully the story is still as strong as ever to make up for that and this is the last issue of this arc so there’s that. Tleilaxu is one shady arse em effer i’ll say this much. All his machinations and planting of evidence and trying to ensure that House Atreides looks guilty before all are finally going to bear fruit but with Leto’s own last ditch effort to save himself and his position will it be enough to thwart the mad schemers scheme? This is the ultimate science fiction soap opera and I have to say that it continues to be an ultimate joy to be reading.

As the trial gets underway Shaddam enters the courtroom and there’s an audible gasp but whom is he there to support? I am loving every moment of the way that we are seeing this being told. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information are immaculately rendered. The character development that we see through the narration, the dialogue, the character interaction as well as how we see them act and react to the situations and circumstances which they encounter does a magnificent job with their ever changing and evolving personalities. The pacing is excellent and as it takes us through the pages revealing the story it doesn’t take long to see how all this is going to play out.

I am a fan of the way that we see this being structured and how the layers within the story continue to emerge, grow, evolve and strengthen. I am also liking how we see the layers open up new avenues to be explored and with a new arc on the horizon I am hoping that some of these will spill over because the depth, dimension and complexity they add to the story is immeasurable. How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how we see everything working together to move the story forward is impeccably handled.

I stated part of my case on the interiors earlier and I was really disappointed that the last issue doesn’t live up to the standard Dev set early on. We do see some decent use of backgrounds throughout to enhance and expand the moments and how they work within the composition of the panels bring out the depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the story. The various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work is extremely well rendered.

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I’m telling you that if this is your introduction to the franchise you are going to enjoy the novels and the films so much more. For those already fans of the franchise this is just a beautiful supplement to the works already out there. It is nice to see the guys having such a passion for this project and understanding the world of Dune so intimately that they are able to really expand the characters and bring us such a strong and entertaining story. The writing is impeccable and the characterisation is exciting while the interiors bring it all to life.