The Lost Prince: A Droid Adventure

The Lost Prince

Author: Ellen Weiss

Illustrator: Amador

Medium: Picture book

Publication Date: November 1985

Timeline Placement: 15 BBY

 

An adaptation of the fifth episode of the Droids cartoon, the beginning of the series' second story arc. There are about a million retellings and partial adaptations of the six Star Wars films in the form of short illustrated children's books, and because there are already so many more substantial adaptations as well (novelizations, junior novelizations, comic adaptations, audio dramatizations, video game adaptations, manga, and so on!), I consider most of that cash-in kiddie stuff not worth bothering with. As with The White Witch, the reason I'm reading The Lost Prince, despite it being a straight adaptation of a pre-existing story, is because adaptations of Expanded Universe stories are extremely rare compared to adaptations of the movies, and the original illustrations commissioned for these books are wholly new EU artwork that deserves to be appreciated. 

 

The A Droid Adventure series adapted only four of the Droids cartoon's fourteen episodes. An additional three episodes were adapted by Dragon Picture Books, but those feature no original artwork, instead simply reusing stills and screengrabs from the TV series to illustrate their text. As such, I've elected to exclude them from this reading list. Also, I couldn't find any of them on eBay.

Where The White Witch was a quick and breezy read, The Lost Prince is, bizarrely, by far the longest picture book we've encountered so far, and the one written on the most advanced reading level. The illustrations are much nicer than those in The White Witch, but also take up considerably less page space. The White Witch boasted several double-page spreads with a few lines of text at the top of the page, whereas The Lost Prince has several pictures that are condensed down to half a page or less. Some pages have no illustrations at all, instead containing multiple paragraphs of text that, while printed in a somewhat large font, fill the entire page from top to bottom. It's almost like reading a real book!

The tale of Mon Julpa, the lost prince of Tammuz-an, is one I've been familiar with since childhood, having rented the cobbled-together "feature film" edit of those episodes on VHS from our local video rental store many times in my misbegotten youth. This book marks the beginning of that epic tale, the fateful meeting of R2-D2 and C-3PO with Jann Tosh, a twenty-year-old miner working for his Uncle Gundy on the backwater world of Tyne's Horky. Jann buys the droids at auction, along with a mysterious Kubaz-looking android, to protect them from the abusive alien thug Yorpo Mog. Jann has bitten off more than he bargained for, however, when he realizes that the so-called android is really a mute Tammuz-an alien in disguise. C-3PO names him "Kez-Iban," a Bocce word meaning "he who has returned from death," except in this children's book, where it means "he who has returned from life's journey."

The dastardly crime lord Kleb Zellock, who in this book talks with a weird and annoying-to-read speech impediment that he did not have in the cartoon, is after Kez, who is actually a mind-wiped prince-in-exile deposed by his traitorous vizier. He and Yorpo capture the mute purple giant, and when Jann and the droids try to save their friend they are captured as well. Kleb puts them to work in his mine transporting Nergon-14, "the deadliest element in the universe" according to Threepio. This explosive mineral is used by the Empire in the construction of proton torpedoes.

Thanks to Threepio's quick thinking (and detachable limbs), the gang soon escapes, and are joined by Sollag, a Tammuz-an loyalist who returns the royal scepter of Tammuz-an to Kez-Iban, restoring his memories. The Nergon-14 is triggered by Kleb's mining equipment, and our heroes must make a quick getaway. Kleb tries to flee, leaving Yorpo behind to die, but Threepio accidentally causes Kleb to shoot himself with his own mini-stunner. Jann Tosh, C-3PO, R2-D2, Mon Julpa, Sollag Den, Yorpo Mog, and Kleb Zellock's unconscious bulk escape the exploding mine aboard Kleb's gyrocopter, but it can't handle the weight of its current load so the boys dump all the cargo Kleb had loaded. As they make it to safety, Threepio observes that Kleb is going to be very unhappy when he wakes up, as that cargo contained all of his shekels keshels.

And everybody laughs.