Comics I Don’t Understand

Luke, I Am Your Eggplant

Cidu Bill on Mar 2nd 2010

Filed in Bill Bickel, Brevity, CIDU, Guy & Rodd, Star Wars, comic strips, comics, humor | 31 responses so far

31 Responses to “Luke, I Am Your Eggplant”

Kamino Neko Mar 2nd 2010 at 12:13 am 1

Not much here…it’s just the Vader/Obi Wan fight from Star Wars with Vader as an eggplant and Obi Wan as a banana.

To the choices in casting….eggplants have similar colouring to Vader and a banana leaving an identifiable peel in one piece, like Obi Wan’s robes after he was defeated.

Why it was cast in fruit…well, who knows, but the point is probably just to be silly.
Elyrest Mar 2nd 2010 at 12:13 am 2

The ultimate “food fight”?

Eggplant = Darth Vader; Banana = Obi-Wan Kanobi

The banana skin is akin to Obi-Wan’s robe after Vader” kills” him.
Kit Mar 2nd 2010 at 12:18 am 3

Obi-wan: “You can’t win, Darth. If you strike me down, I shall become more banana than you could possibly imagine. ”
Vader: *drops 16-ton weight on Obi-wan*
Cornbread Mar 2nd 2010 at 12:22 am 4

I can’t add any logical exclamation other than what’s already said, but Darth Eggplant’s pose in panel 4 is so uncannily similar to my memory of the movie scene that it’s funny. I’m just gonna say “Because it’s silly to imagine this very serious scene played out by fruit.”
Kate C Mar 2nd 2010 at 01:39 am 5

What’s with the screw in the final panel, keeping in mind that I’ve only seen the original trilogy once all the way through, and my memory of it is vague at best?
Tim O'Shenko Mar 2nd 2010 at 01:43 am 6

Kate: That screw is the handle of the banana’s deactivated lightsaber.
Rainey Mar 2nd 2010 at 02:15 am 7

I would like to point out that this strip synchronizes with today’s “Rod and Barry” and “Gene’s Journal” strips.
fett101 Mar 2nd 2010 at 03:22 am 8

Must be more a combination of Yoda and Obi-Wan since Yoda has a green lightsaber and Obi-Wan was uncapable of doing any aerobatic flips.
guy Mar 2nd 2010 at 05:52 am 9

I’m sorry, but if you guys don’t like this one, then you’re dead to me.
Dyfsunctional Mar 2nd 2010 at 07:08 am 10

Was Obi-Wan “defeated” or did he just choose to de-materialize and become non-corporeal? I always took it the second way. Of course, Vader of all people should have known that that wasn’t the end of Obi-Wan. And the probing around with his foot afterwards looks a little silly if you think about it.
Nicole Mar 2nd 2010 at 07:24 am 11

fett101 #8 You win the Star Wars geek award.
Karen Mar 2nd 2010 at 08:22 am 12

The banana peel is supposed to be like Obi-Wan’s robe, which was all that was left when he was defeated (or chose to ascend, or whatever highly evolved Jedis get to do). I never really understood that. Yoda died normally from old age, but he was still there as a ghost (?) noncorporeal spirit (?) vision (?) for Luke at the end of Return of the Jedi. And so was Obi-Wan. Huh.
Lihtox Mar 2nd 2010 at 08:29 am 13

@Dyfsunctional: Obi-Wan allowed Vader to hit him with the lightsaber; he wasn’t exactly defeated, but I don’t think he had any sort of de-materializing powers, and he was definitely dead at the end (like Yoda and Anakin at the end of RotJ).
Steffen Mar 2nd 2010 at 08:34 am 14

I didn’t get it. I didn’t need to, I still laughed at the ridiculousness (I too wondered about the screw)
padraig Mar 2nd 2010 at 09:28 am 15

And when you take Eggplant Vader’s helmet off, he’s got this big hydroponic system pumping water through his nose, and inside the eggplant shell there’s just a prune.
Tom Mar 2nd 2010 at 10:19 am 16

Until I saw this colored version, I assumed it was an extension of the popular “Darth Tater” theme. In black and white, he looks like a potato in this strip.

And yeah, the dematerialization thing really bugs me. In Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back, I assumed Kenobi was doing something SPECIAL by vanishing and coming back as a glowy spirit. But later movies made it seem like any Jedi could do it.
Esteban Mar 2nd 2010 at 10:55 am 17

I get it. It just isn’t funny.
Cidu Bill Mar 2nd 2010 at 01:34 pm 18

Guy, certianly a lightsabre battle between an eggplant and a banana is funny on its own terms — but we’re just trying to enhance our enjoyment of it, the same way a film scholar will do a scene-by-scene analysis of Citizen Kane.
Jeff S. Mar 2nd 2010 at 02:03 pm 19

None of the Jedis in the Order could do it after they were all slaughtered. They were just gone. I can’t remember if Qui-Gon Jinn went non-coporeal or not.

And as I recall, Obi-Wan was fairly agile as an apprentice and as a young Master as well. I have a feeling the colorist just colored the sabre as he saw fit.
mkilby Mar 2nd 2010 at 02:17 pm 20

Qui-Gon definitely did not go ethereal. They had to cremate him on a pyre.
John Small Berries Mar 2nd 2010 at 02:20 pm 21

Qui-Gon Jinn’s body did not fade away, but IIRC, his ghost did show up at one point.

In response to fans’ questions as to why his body remained and had to be burnt on a pyre, George Lucas promised that the answer would be in the third episode… but he lied. My guess is that it had been so long since he had written a Star Wars movie that he forgot the bodies vanished… and then when it came time to make the third movie, he forgot that he’d promised an answer to his earlier lapse.
J-L Mar 2nd 2010 at 02:47 pm 22

Sadly, John Small Berries (in comment #21) may be right about George Lucas lapsing. However, if we want to give George the benefit of the doubt (in that it was the way he meant it all along), I believe this could be the proper explanation:

You know how the deceased Obi-Wan Kenobi talked to Luke as a force-ghost in episodes IV, V, and VI? Well, that ability was only recently discovered several years earlier by Qui-Gon Jinn (and only after he died). Once Qui-Gon discovered how to communicate from the afterlife to non-deceased persons, he shared the secret with Yoda and Obi-Wan (and possibly other Jedi, as well).

Having a Jedi’s body disappear at death supposedly goes hand-in-hand with the ability to talk to still-living Jedi. So since Qui-Gon didn’t have this knowledge and ability upon dying, his body didn’t disappear like those of the other Jedi in later episodes.
John Small Berries Mar 2nd 2010 at 03:07 pm 23

George Lucas has said so many conflicting things in interviews (e.g. in one he said that the success of the first one spurred him to develop it into a three-trilogy series; in another, he said it was planned as nine movies from the start) that I think he’s just making stuff up as he goes along, and changing his mind as it suits him. (”We need a scientific reason for The Force. I know! Microscopic organisms in their cells called Midichlorians!” “Well, that went over like a lead balloon, let’s just never mention them again.”)

I’d go further, but anything I could say is nowhere near as eloquent or funny as this video review series of The Phantom Menace.
paperboy Mar 2nd 2010 at 03:34 pm 24

The concept would be funny if done as animation (like on Robot Chicken) but as a comic-strip, it’s kinda flat.
Kit Mar 2nd 2010 at 05:22 pm 25

Speaking of “flat,” did no one else see a connection to Monty Python’s skit about defending yourself when attacked with fruit?
Soup Dragon Mar 2nd 2010 at 05:59 pm 26

Yes Kit, I got it from your first post, and chuckled to myself. But I don’t think that’s what the artist had in mind.
mkilby Mar 2nd 2010 at 10:59 pm 27

@ John Small Berries (21) - I cannot remember any scene in any of the movies where Qui-Gon’s ghost shows up. It may occur in some of the semi-canonical “sideshow” material (Lucas-approved books, etc.); I’ve never bothered to read any of that stuff.

There is a retroactive “precedent” for Qui-Gon’s pyre: Darth Vader was torched in Return of the Jedi, and then Lucas went for the schmaltzy “happy end” by displaying Anikin’s ghost along with Yoda and Obi-Wan. Qui-Gon had not been invented at that point, of course, but that’s just another one of Lucas’s inconsistencies.
Jeff S. Mar 2nd 2010 at 11:05 pm 28

I’ll have to look, but I think Qui-Gon DID show up at the end of the 3rd (6th) movie, “Star Wars, Episode III: We’ve Milked It Dry”
Powers Mar 3rd 2010 at 07:08 am 29

He didn’t, but Yoda referred to him, saying he’d had contact with Qui-Gon and that Qui-Gon would teach Obi-Wan how to do it.
Araxie Aug 11th 2010 at 03:28 am 30

Brevity often works for me because of its sheer scale of randomness- this one is a good example. It’s just… SILLY. That’s why I smile.
mitch4 Aug 11th 2010 at 07:31 am 31

Once I was taking a French-reading-exam-prep class, and struggled with my assigned passage apparently about an innkeeper and his wife the eggplant. Wha?