Moomins, By Gum

[akirlu]

Well, it's about bloody time. The Canadian graphic novel publishing concern, Drawn & Quarterly, will be bringing out the complete Tove Jansson-drawn Moomin comic strips, in five volumes, starting this fall. Apparently this is, as I had long suspected, the first time the comics have been published in North America at all. Which is just nuts, really. Because Jansson is just bloody brilliant. [click on the link for the pdf there] And it isn't even as if they had to be translated -- they were originally published in English, in the London Evening News. In the mid-1950s. I have been muttering under my breath for years now that someone needs to do re-issues of the bound comic collections that were a staple of my childhood.

Well, thank god for the Canadians. I would say get your pre-order in now, but apparently these guys at D+Q don't believe in that stuff. But somebody nudge brisingamen and groliffe, 'cause they're gonna want these when they're out.

Link thanks to jrittenhouse. Thanks, Jim!!

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

MOOOOOOOMINS!

She said with great dignity.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

Moomins! I must have! I must have!

[jrittenhouse.livejournal.com]

Oh, you're welcome - I never saw any of these. I'm also highly interested in the video stuff, but...

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

I presume the same strips, yes. If you look carefully at some of the strips in the Swedish-language books you occasionally find signs that the original strips were made for an English-language audience -- signage and things in the background are in English and hasn't been corrected to Swedish. Not a lot, but enough to provide a hint.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Yes. See, I'm thinking there's a small-but-avid following of Tove Jansson who will be of the same mind. Which is why I wrote a little note to the publisher suggesting that they might want to make it possible to pre-order the books.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

I never saw any of these.

No, I would imagine not. Unless you were growing up in Scandinavia in the early '60s, there's not much reason you should be. I don't think the full strips have ever been collected in English. Actually, I think there was a reissue in Sweden some years back, but I don't get the sense that the editions were even as nice as the paperbound hardcovers I have (much worse for the wear) copies of.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

A totally appropriate dignity, at that.

[dalmeny]

We will look forward to these.

Last year, we got to visit the Moomin Museum in Tampere.

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

Tove Jansson was the reason Ramsey Campbell's mad mom knew she wasn't really mad, and he knew she was.

[bedii.livejournal.com]

I think you've got a slight error here. The Comics Journal ran an article about the strips (with samples) several years ago, and, according to them, only the first month or so were drawn by her: she had so many demands on her time that she enlisted her brother to draw the strip for the rest of the run--I can't remember if he contributed to the writing as well. I'm a sporadic newsstand reader of TCJ and don't have the issue myself, but a look through the back issues at a local comics shop would probably turn it up quickly.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

No, I think The Comics Journal is in error. She did indeed eventually get her brother to draw the strip, but at least the first six of the original comic collections are signed by her (possibly more -- I've got a gap between #6 and #10), and that's certainly more than a month or two's worth of comics.

[bedii.livejournal.com]

Well, TCJ has been known to make mistakes, and I'm quoting from memory which is always open to error. The signing of collections isn't an absolute guide as to who did what in that period, however: Al Capp never allowed anyone but him to draw the character's faces but he had an army of assistants and those items were always "by Al Capp." (A collector can always tell the strips that Frazetta did: the male bodies look like Capp's, but with the exception of Mammy Yokum the women's bodies look as if they'd been doing serious weight training.)

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

All very well, but not really applicable. When Lars Jansson took over the strip, he also started signing it. Also, it's *very* clear who's doing the drawing, based on differences in line. Tove's line is bolder, with the variable width one associates with brush-work, and has a slightly jaggy quality that looks like she was working on a surface with a bit of tooth to it. Her curves are smoother and much more self-assured; Lars' renderings of Moomin noses tend to have a stop/break at the top, rather than a single curve. Lars' line is more angular and single-weight, and finer -- almost as if he's working with a technical pen. The two are not mistakeable for each other.

If you're quoting from memory, I would suggest you misremembered the units. I believe Lars took over the strip after a couple of *years*.

[bedii.livejournal.com]

You must be correct: I didn't know that Lars started signing the comic when he took over, so I'm probably misremembering the units. The reason that the article stuck in my memory in the first place was the news that the material hadn't been available here since it's initial publication: I remember thinking at the time that a copyright/ownership nightmare like the one that's ensnared "The Apple War" or the manga of "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." from the 60's was the usual reason for something to stay unavailable for so long.