One Million Ways To Die in the Star Wars Universe

Greg Stones, 99 Stormtroopers Join the Empire

One stormtrooper fails to shoot first.
One stormtrooper doesn’t let the Wookie win.
One stormtrooper fails Lord Vader for the last time.

Back in 1963, macabre cartoonist Edward Gorey published a storybook for grown-ups called The Gashlycrumb Tinies, in which twenty-six children meet horrible ends. Did you ever wonder how that would look if nerds rewrote it for their favorite franchise? Yeah, me neither. But Greg Stones, author of Zombies Hate Stuff and Sock Monkeys Have Issues, apparently did. And boy am I glad, because this book is funny.

Stones imagines different ways stormtroopers die grisly deaths. Stomped by AT-AT Walkers; frozen in carbonite; fed to the Sarlacc; stationed on Alderaan. The deaths incorporate images from all eight live-action movies, though mostly the original trilogy. Some deaths probably refer to ancillary material I haven’t read yet. All are hilarious in the deadpan delivery of frankly gruesome content that the characters probably hated.

As with Gorey, however, the real life comes from Stones’ illustrations. His flat, cartoonish look contrasts with the three-dimensional, computer-generated style favored in so many picture books these days, a deliberate nod to his adult audience’s nostalgia for their childhood reading. The approach is playful, with oversaturated colors and not-quite realistic proportions (nobody casts a shadow). The stormtroopers are drawn wearing armor from the original trilogy.

click to enlarge

Stones’ poker-faced prose, never more than one sentence per page, and childlike folk illustrations, give the gruesome content its ironic comedy. There’s always something hilarious about stating awful things like you’re discussing the weather, especially when you know it’s fiction. Stones’ understatement of the truly awful gives his storybook a Gary Larson-ish tone of gallows hilarity. Who doesn’t love laughing in the face of certain death?

This book is, undoubtedly, part of a marketing push to make Star Wars timely with Disney’s purchase of Lucasfilm. Funny enough, I’m okay with that.  Despite the cynical marketing edge, if publishers can release books that bring happiness into customers’ lives, I say let them. Stones’ playfully grim take on Imperial incompetence will give nostalgic grown-ups the boost they need while awaiting the next movie release.