It is a scene many parents will recognise – Dad has had to take his son to work and is trying to get through a meeting, but the child has other, louder ideas. It's all very awkward, but even more so when Dad is Darth Vader and his son is Luke Skywalker. Yes, even the dark side of the Force can't save him from childcare foul-ups.

The scene is from a new book by graphic novelist Jeffrey Brown and poses a simple question: what if Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker had had a normal father/son relationship?

Darth Vader and Son sees Vader desperately trying to be a dad in that way that many men will recognise, so the obvious question is, does Brown have children of his own?

"Yeah, I don't think I could have done it before I had a child," he says from his home in Chicago. Oscar, who is five-and-half, played a big part in the genesis of the book. "I had a call from a friend who works at Google as one of its homepage designers – when they have a different image on the homepage, he is one of the guys who draws that image or helps to come up with the idea. They were getting ready for Father's Day and wanted to do something with the idea of how awkward it would be for Darth Vader and Luke to get together at a holiday dinner."

Oscar was four at the time and Brown says it seemed obvious that he should make Luke the same age: "You know, to have him frustrating Darth Vader in the way that four-year-olds generally frustrate fathers …"

Brown did some preliminary sketches for Google, but the company eventually decided to go with another idea. By now, though, he was wedded to exploring the concept of Darth Vader taking an active role in raising his son. Google was fine with him taking off on his own to do the book – as were the higher-ups at Lucasfilm, the people behind Star Wars.

Brown threw himself into imagining how staff on the Death Star might react to a bring-your-child-to-work day, or the practical parenting applications of the Force. "One of the things that helped to inspire the book was thinking that, like me, there are so many people who grew up with Star Wars and they now have kids who are into it too. When I was growing up, there was nothing my dad was into that had the same connection.

"It's weird for my wife, because she doesn't know all the Star Wars stuff, and Oscar and I will be there playing and she's just looking at us with this look of confusion/amazement/fear on her face."

But you don't have to be a Star Wars fan to appreciate what this tender little book tells us: you can have all the power in the galaxy, but that is as nothing compared to the awesome abilities possessed by the average four-year-old.

Darth Vader and Son, by Jeffrey Brown, is published by Chronicle Books, £9.99. To order a copy for £7.99, including UK p&p, go to theguardian.com/bookshop or call 0330 333 6846