Moomincomics Madness

One of the books I bought at SPX this year was the new Drawn & Quarterly collection of Tove Jansson's "Moomin" comic strip. It's beautiful, it's gorgeous, it's a really lovely book all in all, but it's so nice to see Jansson's fluid and imaginative drawings all in one place.

Here's the Mymble and Snork Maiden discussing pirates:


And here's Moomintroll, Sniff and Snufkin reeling from the abdication of Moominmamma and Moominpappa:


I was very happy to see this book come out, and I was more than delighted to read all of these strips, it's definitely a worthwhile purchase. But as wonderful as this collection is, it just really can't begin to compare to Jansson's books.

My siblings and I grew up with the Moomin books, and from the looks of it, we might have been the only kids in the US who did. The Moomins are well known almost everywhere else in the world - hell, there's an amusement park based on them in Europe. There've been books, cartoons, movies, and crazy merch out the wazoo. And almost none of it ended up in the US.

My parents read these books to me and my siblings as bedtime stories. We knew all the characters, and even nicknamed one of my sisters "Little My" for her fiery temper. In college, I named the stray cat that hung out on my dorm's back porch after Snufkin.

Now that we're all older, I still turn to the Moomin books on nights when I'm lonely or depressed, and they never fail to cheer me up. They're for children, sure, but they're filled with such poetry and wisdom that they'll move you at any age. Start with Moominsummer Madness, or Tales from Moominvalley, and work your way up to Moominpappa's Memoirs and Moominvalley in November. Jansson's books are transcendent. They're tender, they're sweet, they're funny, they're profound, they're sad and jubilant and lonely and clever in a way that only the Scandinavians can truly be.

I do recommend the comics, I truly do. But they don't reveal the sheer exquisite beauty of Jansson's imagination like the Moomin books do.