Prince Luke and The Missing Princess

Created to celebrate the birth of our daughter, Lily.  In this story, Prince Luke must go on a harrowing quest to save his sister.

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A few notes in case you care about why I picked some of the details of the story.

I wanted an adventure for Luke and a way to introduce his baby sister at the same time.  Babies can't do much, but cousins can!  So 3-year-old Luke is joined by 6-year-old Aaron (who is very silly) and 2-year-old Katie (who is very strong-willed), and Lily plays a minor role.

The "villain" being my dad made sense after a bit of thought because there is nothing in this world my dad loves more than holding babies and chatting to them, which makes for a great (and harmless) motive to kidnap his granddaughter.  He also loves sweets, but it would be hard to transport ice cream up a mountain, so I went with cake.

I'd originally thought of the goblin lair being a dark cave, but my dad is claustrophobic and so I chose to set him on the very top of a mountain.

My mom is an adventurous soul, very interested in trying and learning new things, so imagining her as a queen who abdicates and goes on lots of adventures and becomes a well-respected warrior when her royal consort is cursed made sense to me.

"Sir" Puppy is Luke's favorite real-life stuffed animal, and we rarely leave home without him.  Also, Luke will only carry Puppy by wrapping an arm around Puppy's poor stuffingless neck.  And Katie will bring Puppy to Luke sometimes if Puppy is just sitting around.  It's super cute.

The monster is a large version of our cat, Tiger, and Luke has learned that you can offer Tiger a finger to sniff if you're careful and quiet.

I considered giving the kids mounts, but you don't even want to know how bad that looked.  I am not gifted at quadrupeds.

My brother has plastic kiddie swords that he'll use to play with Aaron and Luke sometimes, and then Katie gets hold of one and pokes her brother in the eye because seriously, she's just two, and the game ends.  (I'm hoping to get Katie a short little foam sword of her own at some point so she won't injure people.)  My brother is very good at roughhousing with the kids in general, and it's fun to watch, so the sparring session in the next-to-last panel is a nod to that.

That's all.  Hope you enjoyed it!