96 pages
Collection published 2006; original comic strips published 1954 and 1955
Read June 7
Rating: 4 out of 5
My first exposure to Moomintroll came through this comic strip. Back in the days of online forums, I frequented a thread on newspaper comics where someone regularly posted strips from Moomin. The strips were strange, fanciful, unexpectedly dark and moving at times. I was quite taken with Jansson’s deceptively simple outsider art style. Later on I would learn of Jansson’s queerness and anti-authoritarian bent, both of which peep through Moomin and of course made me fall in love with it all the more. I’ve gone on to read a couple Moomintroll books and watched a good chunk of the old Moomin cartoon from the ’90s. This is my first time revisiting the comic in about a decade.
No cohesive timeline links the multimedia Moomin empire. Whereas The Moomins and the Great Flood begins with Moomintroll and Moominmamma searching for Moominpappa, and the cartoon (which adapts some arcs from the comic strip and probably the books as well) begins with the whole Moomin family living together, the Moomin comic opens with Moomintroll living the bachelor life in his own tower house. It’s silly, but I had to tamp down that insidious capitalist entertainment-as-product conditioning that demands a “canon” of in-universe continuity. To hell with canon. These stories are a delight.
This volume anthologizes the comic strip’s first four arcs: “Moomin and the Brigands,” “Moomin and Family Life,” “Moomin on the Riviera,” and “Moomin’s Desert Island.” All of them are wonderful screwball romps that careen from one unlikely turn to the next. “Brigands” begins with bachelor Moomintroll despairing over how to get rid of his houseguests, then getting his house eaten, then escalates to an accidental elixir that turns everything into its opposite, lands Moomin in jail, and ends with his newfound girlfriend Snorkmaiden defeating a camp of highwaymen, taking their jewels, and liberating their prisoners. All four arcs are similarly frenetic, though “Brigands” and “Desert Island” are my personal favorites.
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