beesknees

The first series of Jeffrey Brown's Darth Vader A Dad Wuh! comics are very cute - lots of little true-to-life moments of raising a wee boy juxtaposed with fannish details. Hitchcock and Scully were immediately obsessed with this book, to the point the 5yo can now pretty much read every page including the author's bio to his little bro with zero help. So, since Scully's a massive Leia fan, it was a no-brainer to pick up the second collection.

This one, though...eh. Illustrations are still very cute, and the details of the world continue to be dead-on, but the authenticity's lacking. Where the author has two boys himself, he seems to pull more from sitcom stereotypes of teenage girls and boyfriend-threatening daddies than Leia as a character. She's pretty much a cliched airhead/rebellious/boy-crazy teen, rather than the over-serious, competent, literal queen-in-waiting 19yo from the first film. There's a lot to be mined there for light, incongruous fun as in the first collection, if one's willing to see a female character as a person as much as the male lead...

Meh. Maybe I'm grumpy there's two jokes about Leia wanting to go out in skimpy iconic costumes - one of which is, of course, the slave bikini. And YES. I'm not totally humorless. I know it's iconic. But I also know, in-universe, it was an ensemble she hated, which was meant to humiliate and dehumanise her, and meta-wise, it and its iconic status is one Carrie Fisher had at best deeply mixed feelings toward. Of course it had to be included here somewhere, but as an outfit she would be determined to wear...again, eh.

Maybe I am humorless, actually.

Think I'll just tuck this collection on a high shelf and make up some kid-Leia stories to tell them at bedtime instead.