A few years ago, The Book of Bunny Suicides was all the rage. Who knew how thoroughly entertaining and stress busting it could be to look at short but snigger-inducing cartoons of rabbits committing suicide? It was followed up by Selfish Pigs and more recently the explosion of internet memes, abusing stills by scrawling writing on them to entirely warp the situation with hilarious results. Now Jeffrey Brown has combined the two, blending it with Star Wars to create his latest humorous creation, Vader’s Little Princess.
The story of the book, as it is in loose chronological order, follows from the close of Revenge of the Sith to Return of the Jedi, with Vader suffering the torture of raising Leia as a single Sith Lord. Indeed the first still, with indignant toddler Leia sets the tone for the book as she tells him, “From now on, you do as I say.” She’s predictably a mischievous little madam, deviously hiding Daddy’s keys in an astromech Droid and then launching it off the Star Destroyer in an escape pod. Vader exacts his own revenge though, insisting on dropping her off right in front of school in the family AT-AT instead of just waiting at the curb like every self-respecting father this side of Fondor.
All too soon, she has a blaster-rifle in her arms, is entering puberty, becoming a teenager and poor old Darth’s wishing he had his little girl back. When she models a fashionable crop-top design in an allusion to a certain, iconic Galactic Senator, Darth’s typically Dad-ish: “You may dispense with the pleasantries, your Highness. I’m here to tell you to pull your pants up.”
When bringing new boyfriend Han Solo over for dinner in Cloud City, chaos predictably ensues as he ropes in a Bounty Hunter to watch that Solo keeps his hands to himself. “Behave yourself, or my Dad will totally kill you.” Leia counsels. Isn’t she a wise one?
Luke makes a rare appearance when he’s crashed his Dad’s prized X-Wing into a swamp and Leia insists, ‘Dad will know how to retrieve it.’ Luke’s typically teenage-boyish, “Are you kidding?! We can’t tell Dad!” Indeed, the virtue of Vader’s Little Princess is that it perfectly captures the stereotypical father-daughter relationship but puts a Star Wars spin on it. Vader embarrasses Leia by dancing at the hip Mos Eiseley Cantina, demanding Han doesn’t keep her out on the Tauntaun past her curfew and drags her along to the dull, ominous spectacle of a Pod Race on his old homeworld, Tatooine.
He tells Leia off for dressing in a metal bikini, tells her she can’t borrow the Imperial Shuttle after denting it the last time, freezes her boyfriend in carbonite (the true dream of every father) and causes him endless troubles, such as destroying his Death Star: “You blew up my WHAT!?” Lastly he helps her pick out schools, but is predictably disapproving of her choice of notorious party-school Coruscant University, favouring the more conservative Imperial Academy…especially because it’s cheaper.
Witty, compact and written with a true eye and love for the franchise it is drawn from, Vader’s Little Princess offers a little slice of fan-heaven, although the hilarious colloquial situations will be equally accessible for people who don’t even like Star Wars.