From the pages of
.Blue Harvest.
A Star Wars fanzine Episode Ten, Autumn 1996
(549 Hinman #H1, Evanston, IL 60202, $14 per year)
THE STAR WARS/SIMPSONS CONNECTION
By Mary Jo Fox
Since 1990, audiences have followed the adventures of America’s favorite dysfunctional family, the Simpsons. Anyone who is as fanatical about the show as I am has noticed that SW gets mentioned an awful lot. There seems to be a cosmic connection between that galaxy far, far away and the little burg of Springfield. To wit:
¥ Bart visits the lost-and-found counter at a comics con, where one of the “found” items is a lightsabre.
¥ Early in the show’s first season, Bart bands his friends together to fight the neighborhood bully. At the end, Bart tells us that all war is wrong, with the exceptions of “the American Revolution, World War II, and the Star Wars trilogy.”
¥ When Grandpa Simpson inherits a large windfall, Darth Vader is in line with just about every other inhabitant of Springfield to ask for his money.
¥ Vader seems to be a big favorite with the show’s writers. Twice the “Imperial March” plays in the background as Mr. Burns watches over his workers on his video monitors. A drawing of Vader hangs above the caricature booth at the school fair. Then there’s the episode where Lisa’s dead sax-playing friend appears in the clouds a la The Lion King. Simba’s father appears next to him and says, “Simba, avenge my death.” Next, Vader’s noggin appears and he says, “Luke, I am your father (sic),” followed by James Earl Jones’s head as he says, “This is CNN.”
¥ Leonard Nimoy comes to town to dedicate the new monorail system. Mayor Quimby tells Nimoy, “May the Force be with you.”
¥ Ralph Wiggum wins the school diorama contest with his boxful of carded SW action figures; Principal Skinner, a collector, pores over the figures with glee before giving Ralph first prize. Ralph later trips and falls on his box of figures, leading him to utter the immortal lament, “I bent my Wookiee.”
¥ Homer and Marge go to see TESB [The Empire Strikes Back] during their courting days, and after the movie, he blurts out to everyone waiting in line that Vader is Luke’s father. He also tells Marge she’s “as pretty as Princess Leia and as smart as Yoda.”
¥ Bart’s pal Milhous has a toy X-Wing hanging in his room.
¥ Lisa goes to a hairdresser before competing in the Little Miss Springfield pageant. The hairdresser experiments with a number of styles, including the Leia buns.
¥ The Simpsons go see a movie with THX sound. The theater starts shaking, the roof caves in, the exit sign explodes, a man’s teeth shatter, another man’s head blows up, and the audience cheers.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): zine cover.