Tove Jansson's "Moomin" newspaper strip

I've just received the newly published volume three of the planned five volumes of Tove Janssons complete "Moomin" newspaper strip. She wrote and drew this series in the 1950s after her illustrated Moomin books had become a hit, and a British newspaper asked her to do it as a daily newspaper strip.

I remember reprints of this series in my local newspaper during my childhood in the late 1970s, but it's been mostly forgotten in the English speaking world, and it's never been relased in the US until now.

And it's a complete delight. strange, moody and surreal, this is not solely a comic strip for kids , it often has quite grown up sensibility. And it's also quite timeless. It reads as well now as it must have done in the fifties.

I'd defititely recommend this wonderful series to just about everyone. You can read the first story from the first volume online. It's and early story, still quite episodic, and most of the supporting cast hasn't been introduced yet, but you can still get a sense of the wonderful weirdness that lurks within these books: STORY HERE


"A lost treasure now rediscovered--one of the sweetest, strangest comics strips ever drawn or written. A surrealist masterpiece. Honest." --Neil Gaiman

"[Jansson's] work soars with lightness and speed, and her drawings only echo her writing: delicate but precise, observant yet suggestive... Jansson was exceptional, an exuberant explorer of emotional independence and interdependence, a liberating force." --Los Angeles Times Book Review