Posted on April 12, 2026

Comics go to the movies: The Dark Crystal

“Charm” isn’t a word I often use as a descriptor, because I reserve it for the work of just two people: Charles Shulz and Jim Henson. They both charmed me when I was a child, and earned my devotion for life.

Shulz showed me the simple power of drawing, which became my career. Henson showed me the simple power of authenticity, toward which I strive in everything I do. When I outgrew Sesame Street, there were the Muppets. And with the Muppets came spinoff works that crossed over into the world of drawing. But in that crossover, I quickly noticed what was missing: the authenticity.

You’d think it would go the other way, but here’s a prime example: when a Muppets comic strip landed on the newspaper page (with Peanuts) in the fall of 1981, everything I liked about the Muppets was missing. Another one example was Marvel’s adaptation of The Muppets Take Manhattan, which you can see in full here. And it’s not just the authenticity that’s missing; Henson’s craftsmanship was so specifically rooted in his authenticity that it simply did not carry over into drawings by someone else.

I sort of made that discovery on my own when (at age 14) I drew a comic book version of The Muppet Movie, which you can see in its entirety here. I did it as a Christmas present for my younger sister. But as soon as we had a copy of the movie itself, my pale imitation was instantly forgotten. It was a powerful lesson in both authenticity and craftsmanship.

When it was announced in 1981 that Henson and his muppeteers were shifting into the world of fantasy, advised and abetted by George Lucas and Gary Kurtz, I was prepared for something special. It would be the world’s first all-puppet, no-human feature film, and I was ready to see it as soon as it was announced. But first, of course, I read the comic book adaptation.

Marvel Super Special #24, adapting The Dark Crystal in magazine format, was published about a month before the movie arrived on December 17, 1982. In those days, I didn’t feel strongly about waiting for the movie if an adaptation was available earlier. Big plot twists like “I am your father” were also shocking in a novelization, for example. So when a Dark Crystal adaptation was on the shelves in advance of the film, I gobbled it right up.

2-issue comic book version

My first reaction to the story was, “there’s not much new here.” I saw the same exact sentiment in a couple movie reviews later on. The story was pretty standard fantasy fare. What made it special was – again – authenticity and craftsmanship: the art direction, puppetry, and performance techniques. So while the comic didn’t make a huge impression on me, the movie sure did. As with Blade Runner a few months earlier, the artistry of the film went so far beyond what we got on the printed page that there was almost no comparison.

Owing to the above, it won’t be productive to compare the comic to the movie since it lacked the qualities that could never be captured. So instead, let’s see what it managed to accomplish on its own.

Super Special page at left, comic book page at right

Two things pop out for me. I’ll start with the smaller one.

An advantage comics have over movies is the availability of words. This gives them some of the strength of novels, which (of course) are formed entirely of words. There are plenty of words available to movies, but too many can undermine a visual presentation. This is why novels are always condensed or highly edited when adapted into films; dialogue no longer has to carry as big a load when you can transform some of it into sound and pictures.

How did this factor into The Dark Crystal adaptation? The greater availability of words added lore to the story that we didn’t get in the film. For example, each Mystic and each Skeksis had an individual name and personality. This could have been imparted on screen, but it would have added nothing to the experience. In fact, it would have accomplished the opposite, weighing the story down with more trivia than it required. But in the comic, this information added value.

In a movie, control of time belongs to the moviemaker. In a comic, control of time belongs to you, the reader. You can decide how much time you want to spend on a page or dwell on a factoid. There’s still a balance to be observed in writing a comic; the limits of physical space on a page discourages excessive word usage. But in The Dark Crystal, the balance is just right. You get enough lore along the way to add value and texture. The adaptation fares better because of it.

I should add that none of the lore was invented by Marvel’s writer, David Anthony Kraft. It was all developed for the film and maintained through spinoff literature.

The second thing that pops out is the use of full-process color.

To understand what that is, and why it’s a particular strength of this comic, it’s necessary to talk some shop. Hopefully that’s what you’re here for.

Comics generally have one penciler and one inker. In this case, the penciler was the very capable Bret Blevins. The inker, on the other hand, was the very controversial Vince Colletta. He was a mainstay at Marvel for one specific reason: he was fast. When you needed someone who was guaranteed to hit a deadline, Vince was your man. Unfortunately, he earned that reputation by under-inking. If there was too much detail in the penciling, he’d leave it out. Untold volumes of drawing never got to the printed page because of Colletta’s refusal to ink it. But he always got a book in on time, and that’s what counted to the boss.

Rumor has it that Jack Kirby was once asked how he felt about Colletta’s habits on his own penciling and gave a typically magnanimous response: “He needs the work.”

Under ordinary circumstances, Colletta’s inking on The Dark Crystal would have been a deficit given the requirements of translating such a carefully-designed film to the page. But here’s the thing: in this case it was a bonus. Why? Because it left a lot of room for color. Less linework creates more open space for color to fill in what’s missing from the art. And color is absolutely what made this project shine.

I used the term “full process” earlier, and to communicate what that means I need to tell you how most comics were colored back in the 70s and 80s. Before the digital revolution, the color range was very limited, and the end results were seldom satisfying. The steps went like this: a colorist would apply pre-selected dyes to a copy of a finished page. This became a guide for a color separation team to create separate plates for printing. Click here for a very informative article that will tell you how they did it.

“Full-process color” differed from that by taking the colorist’s work and using photographic filters to separate the color instead of doing it by hand. It sounds easier, but it was more expensive. Not just because of the mechanics involved, but because the original color was fully painted with a much larger palette and took longer to do. The Super Special edition of The Dark Crystal, for example, required no less than eight colorists to paint all 48 pages in the time available. Someone probably fought for this. And man, was it worth it.

As if to help us appreciate the higher production values, Marvel provided an alternate version for comparison. Like most of their other movie adaptations, they published this one in two formats: the Super Special magazine, and a 2-issue limited series in standard comic format. The 2-issue version had just one colorist (George Roussos) and went through the standard separation process. All you have to do is put pages side by side to see what a vast difference it made. (As you’ve seen above.)

For one thing, without the added texture of full-process painted color, the deficits of Vince Colletta’s inking are immediately apparent. Everything looks typically under-drawn. As a reader who used to groan every time I saw his name on a comic I was about to read, I was astonished to see how well his style meshed with a better color technique. I occasionally see that same syncing in modern comics with their infinite digital palette. Used properly, color can rescue cheap art the same way sound can rescue cheap animation (a topic for another day).

My conclusion: this adaptation could never truly do justice to the movie it derives from, but stands on its own for reasons that derive entirely from the process of making comics. This still makes it an impressive effort over 40 years later.

Read (and compare) the two editions in full here:

Marvel Super Special #24

2-issue version (2024 “Archive Edition” by Archaia)