108 pages
Collection published 2008; original comic strips published 1956 and 1957
Read January 5
Rating: 4 out of 5
Thanks to a lovely holiday gift from my partner R, I’m continuing my read-through of Tove Jansson's collected Moomin comic strips. Those began, naturally, with Volume One and Volume Two.
This time the reprinted stories include:
“Moomin in Love,” another Janssonian burlesque of midcentury heteroromantic norms, in which the most sensible character is (as she so often is) Little My;
“Moominvalley Turns Jungle,” in which a heatwave allows a crate full of tropical seeds to proliferate, and Stinky sets the residents of a zoo free in the valley;
“Moomin and the Martians,” in which various hijinks ensue when the Moomins find a machine from a crashed flying saucer;
“Moomin and the Sea,” in which Moominpappa pursues his ambition to be a lighthouse keeper, and the family meets a ghostly new friend;
and lastly, “Club Life in Moominvalley,” which sees Moominmamma — excluded from Moominpappa’s Rebel Fathers Club — joining both a criminal syndicate and a volunteer constabulary with Moomin.
I loved how “Jungle” gave Jansson so many opportunities to show off her outsider art style with all the plants and animals, and I adored the ACAB energy that pervaded “Martians.” Overall, this was another solid volume. Too bad this book was, essentially, the last batch of strips written solely by Tove.
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