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

Some of the First-Ever Photos Taken in Space Have Been Lovingly Restored

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://petapixel.com/2025/10/22/some-of-the-first-ever-photos-taken-in-space-have-been-lovingly-restored-gemini-mercury-remastered/

Midam's gagalicious, ultra-gory "Game Over" series [Mature] [Restored Post]

The premise here is light as a feather– a Dungeons & Dragons-type character is in a videogame setting, in which he’s attempting to ‘exit the game level,’ presumably to take a nice rest. Frequently that involves attempting to rescue a princess along the way.

Altho he’s rather dwarfish in stature, the problem isn’t the hero’s energy, fierceness or ingenuity, but rather that something’s always going wrong. And by ‘going wrong,’ I mean that he typically suffers all variety of gruesome deaths at the hands of the dungeon’s traps. He, the princess, the endless stream of monsters… just everyone.

(right-click as needed)

Game Over is technically a spinoff series of Midam’s (Michel Ledent of Belgium) Kid Paddle series for kids, but one hardly needs any backstory, even though the full albums (and there are over two dozen) tend to be bookended with Kid Paddle context. To be clear– these are largely wordless comics that can be consumed in any language.

TBH, I fear that I’m always going to be a bit weirded out by this series, which combines light, kid-like, gag-ish elements right next to total gore, in which the characters are seemingly ready to burst in to total pools of eyeballs, bones & blood given the slightest impetus. There’s also the fact that the comics (to me, anyway) are completely hit-or-miss, with a lot more duds than successes IMO. Still, it’s a BD classic of sorts, and certainly worth a look as a BD hobbyist.

PieFed seems to have recently changed, in which it seems like thumbnail previews no longer work. Well, at least viewing posts from a PF instance. Maybe that’s not the case when viewing from Lemmy or other networks, though? Anyway, I’ll just give you a link to the full nine comics here:

https://imgur.com/gallery/little-best-of-collection-of-midams-game-over-series-9-total-Z5IVE7f

Btw, I see there’s a much big Imgur archive , if you’re looking for more. Cheers!

Link's Path, from "The Journey Begins," by Mathieu Bablet [3 total] [RESTORED POST]

I understand Bablet did this piece as sort of a love-letter to video games from his youth.

Another closeup:

https://i.imgur.com/IDXW9Lb.jpeg
(right-click as needed)

And the overall GRAND, magnificent piece, The Journey Begins:

https://i.imgur.com/wl8aljO.jpeg

(ALT SOURCE)

More explained about this project: (major thx to ARCHIVE.ORG)
https://web.archive.org/web/20241009164834/https://www.geek-art.net/p/art-print-geek-art-x-editions-caurette

Scrooge McDuck, his icy heart softened by... light opera?! [RESTORED POST]

This is one of the first of (perhaps) many posts to come, ones which unfortunately didn’t manage to migrate over from our original instance, i.e. the late, great Lemm.ee. Much thanks to @emuspawn@geostationary.orbiting.observer ("David in Space") for tracking this one down.

In fact, I just realised that some instances seem to have completely archived our original content (while others seemingly did not), and can be searched without even being logged in there. 😀 I also see that Orbiting.Observer perfectly preserved the original comments (which are very interesting), which sadly tended to get lost across various other migrated posts.

Alrighty then, original text follows, with some minor updates:

Sometimes I forget that Disney comics are not just an American thing, but have been thriving in Italy since 1932, specifically via Topolino magazine and associated publications. Interestingly, the published output has not been solely Italian nor American-made, but evidently a mix of original content from both nation’s creators, plus others across Europe.

(right-click as needed)

That’s the final, published cover above, from Topolino #3597 (Oct, ‘24), by Paolo Mottura & Mario Perrotta.

In recent years France’s Glénat publishing house has joined the fun, but has been tending to go in more gonzo directions, not unlike various creators doing guest shots on Lucky Luke.

Mickey et L’Ocean Perdu, thanks to BDT for the images.

Once again, the original comments were really good on that first post, so check ‘em out if you want to go a bit more in to the nuts & bolts of these fine comics.

#FLORIDA: #STOP #ERASING THE #PULSE #MEMORIAL #RAINBOW #CROSSWALK

After #Trump directive, Florida removed rainbow crosswalk that honors the 49 people #killed at Pulse. #demand the crosswalk be #restored and #protected!

https://action.allout.org/en/m/1ff1f50/?akid=138021.6333997.OGmer6&rd=1&t=4&utm_campaign=mgp-1ff1f50&utm_medium=email&utm_source=email