Moomin — eccentric comic masterpiece from a legendary children’s author

[OtherMichael]

I’ve read Moomin; it has an irregular orbit.

[waterloonie]

Swedish first. Jansson was born in Finland, but part of a Swedish-speaking minority.

[Ladyfingers]

Yeah, I loved the '90s cartoon even though it was aimed at a younger audience than me. Very pretty animation.

[Ladyfingers]

No Tintin, no Moomin. America is weird.

[shaddack]

@Ratel

Alas, that image link isn’t coming through for me.

Rightclick, open image in new tab. (At least in Chrome.) Opens an image in Finnish wikipedia with the book cover, titled “Lohikaarmevuori” (“Dragon Mountain”).

(The trick is to click on the image in the medaviewer, so it shows without the javascript interface, then it embeds here without a hitch.)

[vermes82]

Apparantly Disney tried to buy Moomins three times. First time was in the 50s then in 70s and the last time they tried was in the 00s when they wanted to buy all of it.

2 strips from Moomin in Torrelorca where they are trying to buy some marihuana but end up with LBJ pills instead. Not to be mixed up with:

Moomins on the Riviera

[kupfernigk]

@50thomas50

fishermen who run long lines slowly through the water hoping to catch fish (and of course you have to steer well clear of them because you don’t know where those lines are going)."That would be trawling.

Thanks to @daneel for saving me the bother of writing a correction. It’s often wise not to be too quick on the draw, especially when trying to correct someone.

@andy_hilmer

No one ever said Usenet could spell.

Is there anybody else who wants to keep digging this hole of people who don’t know the difference between net fishing and line fishing?

[Raita]

@Ratel

Alas, that image link isn’t coming through for me. Those books look wonderful: the ones I read as a child were more sparsely illustrated.

I failed there, thanks for the save @shaddack.

The original books are indeed sparsely illustrated (in black-and-white), but the picture books are bigger with colourful illustrations and completely different stories, with some characters who don’t appear in any other Moomin works (like the poor, lonely Toffle). If I wanted to get a kid introduced to Moomin, I’d get them one of the picture books first.

@Ratel

The strips strike me strongly as Scandinavian humor, but also as being for adults. They were for a paper. More dry humor and Freud, less magic. But I like them! They’re just a different experience.

I think the comics are one of the less popular forms of Moomin here in Finland, or at least that’s my personal impression. Not that they’re not also very good, they just have a bit of a different feel. Also, though we tend to pretend otherwise, Finland is not technically a part of Scandinavia, so… Let’s call it Nordic.

[Ratel]

@Raita

Finland is not technically a part of Scandinavia, so… Let’s call it Nordic.

Are you trying to trick me into thinking that Finland is a country?

[Raita]

@Ratel

Are you trying to trick me into thinking that Finland is a country?

[adonai]

Absolutely!