Dune: House Harkonnen #8 - BOOM! Studios

DUNE: HOUSE HARKONNEN No. 8, August 2023

For those bibliophiles able to navigate this bemusing mass of people, places, and intervals, Issue Eight of “Dune: House Harkonnen” probably provided them with a number of noteworthy moments; not least of which is the sheer outrage felt when Glossu Rabban travels to Tula Fjord on Lankiveil and abducts his baby brother from the very arms of his parents. Indeed, alongside the dramatic facial disfigurement of poor Warrick at the hands of a terrifying, flesh-stripping sandstorm, this scene should genuinely have its readers wringing their hands in frustration at the injustice of the futuristic “feudal interstellar society.”

Sadly however, the ‘set up’ to these harrowing scenes, as well as those depicted on Salusa Secundus, Ix and Ginaz, are debatably far from convincing - especially as authors Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson repeatedly push the narrative on for months at a time simply through someone clumsily stating, “It has been a year!” since they last did something.

Foremost of these ‘leaps of logic’ surely has to be Abulurd’s utterly bizarre decision to suddenly renounce his House’s name before the Landsraad Council and simply be a Sirdar Governor. This resolve supposedly stems from a desire to peacefully live with his wife and newborn son away from his family’s misguided and sinister political ambitions. But unsurprisingly results in a furious Vladimir Harkonnen seeking retribution directly against him as the Combine Honnete Ober Advancer Mercantiles (CHOAM) demand that the Baron explain to them why his brother has suddenly done this.

Similarly as frustrating though has to be the convenient ability of Ixian resistance fighter C’Tair to cobble together a transmitter which “takes advantage of my mental link” with his sibling-turned-navigator. This technological contrivance is the beginning of an entire domino line of happy happenstances which visual artist Fran Galan is forced to proficiently pencil, as the “artificially super-evolved human” D’Murr fortuitously finds that renegade nobleman Dominic Vernius is incredibly stowed aboard the very interstellar guild heighliner he pilots, and can thus covertly divert the spacefaring vessel back to Ix where “an unmarked, undetectable ship” will take the Earl down to the heavily occupied planet completely unnoticed; “I know a thousand hidden ways to my underground city.”

Written by: Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson, Illustrated by: Fran Galan, and Coloured by: Patricio Delpeche