From Yoda to Ewoks to BB-8, the Star Wars franchise has long had a penchant for cute characters, despite all that unpleasant space genocide going on in the background. That’s why it appeals to multiple generations. Lovable aliens and robots for the kids, cold-blooded extermination of entire civilizations for Mom and Dad. A tendency toward adorableness was in Star Wars’ DNA well before Disney took over the property.
Now a Disney/Marvel artist named Brian Kesinger has managed to take this proclivity to its logical conclusion: a series of illustrations depicting characters from The Force Awakens in the instantly recognizable style of Bill Watterson’s whimsical, much-missed comic strip, Calvin And Hobbes. Why this particular mashup, instead of The Family Circus or Drabble? Kensinger’s inspiration was a scene in which Rey glides down a sand dune in an impromptu, sled-like conveyance. It seemed to Kesinger like a very Calvin-esque solution to a problem, and he depicted the moment accordingly.
The combination of these two pop-cultural powerhouses was evidently so satisfying to the artist that he was compelled to create numerous additional illustrations in Bill Watterson’s Calvin And Hobbes style. John Boyega’s pressed-into-heroism ex-Stormtrooper Finn became a good stand-in for Calvin’s fantasy character, Spaceman Spiff.
And poor Han and Leia can certainly empathize with Calvin’s overtaxed parents, as they, too, have a rambunctious, destructive, and unpredictable son who causes them considerable grief with his behavior.
Brian Kesinger cites Bill Watterson as one of his greatest artistic influences and even created a way to mimic Watterson’s hand-drawn, hand-colored art style via Photoshop through the use of various brushes. And, true to the spirit of both his mentor and the Jedi, Kesinger will not be selling prints of any of these images or licensing them in any way. The admiration of fans, he says, is enough for him.
[via The Hollywood Reporter]