Moomins are peculiar but very lovable creatures that lead a simple and happy life in their valley. The head of Tove Jansson was born in difficult times – the author wrote the first story about Moomins in the winter of 1939, when Finland was repelling the invasion of the Soviet Union. Even then, the creatures were called trolls and in small details differed from the characters that would become famous all over the world in the future. The time of war was a time of despair for Tove, the author began to fall into a deep despondency. Creating stories, as she called them, “innocent and naive”, whose heroes were little trolls, was to bring her comfort and hope. These stories were not published until 1945 under the title Little Trolls and the Great Flood, and soon more stories from the Moomin Land appeared. While writing them, Tove Jansson was inspired, among others, by works by Carl Collodi and Jules Verne.
The first comic book incarnation of the Moomins appeared as early as 1948, three years after their book debut. A story titled Moomintroll and The End of The World appeared as strips in the Swedish-language daily Ny Tid and was essentially an adaptation of the book Comet over the Moomin Valley .
The comic book’s second life came in 1952, when Associated Newspapers approached Tove Jansson with a proposal to create Moomin adventures directly for the British market. The then head of the publishing house, Charles Sutton, wrote in a letter to the author:
It occurred to me that you could make an interesting comic book that might not necessarily be directed at children. It is obvious that the Moomins appeal to children, but we believe that these wonderful creatures can be used in the form of a comic book that makes fun of our so-called civilized lifestyle.
Jansson signed a seven-year contract and set about writing the story with Sutton, who focused her on a number of subjects. The series debuted on July 7, 1954 in The Evening News, which then had nearly twelve million readers. After less than a year, the publisher sold a license to publish in other countries, first to Finland and Sweden, and then to the rest of Europe and the USA. In total, “Moomins” appeared in over forty countries and around one hundred and twenty daily newspapers, which made them the most popular Finnish comic book of all time.
Tove Jansson has written and drawn twenty-one stories about her lovable trolls, including seven with her brother Lars Jansson. When her contract expired in 1959, the series was taken over by Lars, who by 1974 had written another fifty-two stories.
If Tove Jansson can be called the mother of the Moomins, their uncle was undoubtedly the writer’s brother Lars Jansson (1926–2000), also a writer and artist. From 1958, he helped his sister create the comic strip, and from 1961, he took care of it himself, which allowed Tove to return to books and painting. – emphasizes in the afterword to the first volume Maciek Nowak – Kreyer – Lars Jansson drew it until 1974. He also supervised the use of the Moomin characters in the media, incl. in comics, commercials, radio shows and movies. He was also inspired to create various Moomin-related projects, such as a cartoon series by Telecable and the Japanese Tokyo TV Channel 12, broadcast since 1990.
In 1993, the Moomin returned to the press thanks to writers Jukka and Kimmo Torvinen and cartoonist Matti Nisuli. Their creation was supervised by Lars until 1999. In addition, in 1991-2010, the monthly “Moomin Magazine” was published, in which various artists created comic book adaptations of Tove Jansson’s novels and short stories, as well as adaptations of the Japanese-Finnish series “Moomins”.
The series of comic stories about Moomins prepared by the Egmont Polska publishing house will consist of four collective volumes. The first volume contains 11 black-and-white stories: Robbers , Family Life , Moomin on the Riviera , Island Moomin , Dangerous winter , Pretend Play , New Muumi house , new life Moomin , Love Muminek , Jungle in the Valley of the Moomins and Moomin and the Martians .
Moomins, vol 1
Script: Tove Jansson
Drawings: Tove Jansson
Translation: Teresa Chłapowska
