A small reintroduction to Tove Jansson's "Dangerous Journey" (in 4 easy pieces) [RESTORED POST]
Jansson of course was the Swedish-Finnish genius who created the Moomins for an all-ages audience, via text novels, a long-running strip, and GN’s. I want to say it drew somewhat upon American Charles Schulz’ work on Peanuts, in which novel character-types were introduced in a fairly LC-style, exploring just what it is to be a thinking, emotional being. But the Moomin-stories were in fact vastly more whimsical and adventurous, with absurdist fairy-tale and folk story dimensions.
(right-click as needed)
What I really liked about these in particular is that AFAIK, Jansson worked almost exclusively in B&W (not unlike Schulz, classically). So these full-color watercolors kinda blew me away as a simple Moomin fan(!)
The story itself involves a girl’s search for her lost cat, a fairly standard story-device, I suppose. But along the way she meets some wild & wonderful folks. Again a pretty classic story-device, but what makes this one stand out is the silly poetry accompanying the images, which I’m not sure Jansson had exactly attempted in her storytelling, before. Here’s what that looked look like in the reconstructed page, below:
She ran towards the forest that she played in all the time.
Help! It was gone. The trees weren’t there. Now there was just wet slime.
The forest was a mangrove swamp, all dark and dank and strange.
Susanna wished she’d never asked for anything to change.
Water mirrored back her face
In an alarming manner.
‘Who’s this wildcat in my place?
And where is nice Susanna?’
What were those tracks across the ground? Oh, no! Oh, please, not snakes!
Snakes are the worst-they’re worse than mud and monsters and mistakes.
“Please get me out of here!’ Susanna bellowed at the sky.
“I’ve got the point. I’ve had my fill. Soon I will start to cry."
‘Calm down -we’re the harmless kind,’
One little grass snake said.
Susanna left them all behind
And trembled as she fled.
At this point I’ll just quote the fadeout of this loverly, short book:
Tove Jansson* (1914-2001) is Scandinavia’s best-known and best-loved children’s author. She began publishing sketches and cartoons at the age of fifteen and in 1945 wrote the first in a series of internationally renowned Moomintroll books. “The Dangerous Journey” (published originally in 1977) was the final Moomin book that she wrote and illustrated, and offers a memorable last glimpse of Moomin Valley. Jansson lived in Helsinki but spent a large part of her life on an island in the Gulf of Finland.
LBK’s page on her, for more:
https://www.lambiek.net/artists/j/jansson_t.htm
Meanwhile, I’m pleased to say that our colleague @mentaledge@sopuli.xyz over at “Moomin Valley” has been sharing daily strips for some time, now. :D —> https://sopuli.xyz/c/moomin (!moomin@sopuli.xyz) <—
EDIT: Whups, I forgot to mention that I found some more color Moomin art, here:
https://piefed.social/c/moomin/p/1403905/zoom-in-on-the-moomins-3-posters