Exhibit Review: Tove Jansson and the Moomins: The Door Is Always Open

Reviewed by Carli Spina

Tove Jansson and the Moomins: The Door Is Always Open. Brooklyn, New York: Brooklyn Public Library. June 28 - September 30, 2025. https://www.bklynlibrary.org/exhibitions/tove-jansson-and-the-moomins

 

For the summer of 2025, Brooklyn Public Library hosted Tove Jansson and the Moomins: The Door Is Always Open, in honor of the 80th anniversary of the publication of the first Moomin book, The Moomins and the Great Flood. Covering both Jansson’s life and the Moomins’ place in international popular culture, this exhibit was claimed to be the first U.S. exhibit to focus on the Moomins and their creator, Jansson.^[1] The exhibition was spread throughout, and even outside, the Central Library space. When approaching the library, visitors were immediately drawn in by Moomin characters decorating the windows of the Children’s Room and, at night, projected on the outside of the building on either side of the main entrance.

 

Once inside, the exhibit was divided across multiple areas of the Central Library. In the lobby just inside the main entrance, two large displays featured Jansson’s book, with one to the left focused on her Moomin books and one to the right highlighting her adult fiction. These displays featured multiple editions of the books in multiple languages to show the international impact Jansson’s writing and illustrations have had.

 

Beyond these displays, as visitors walked further into the lobby, there were large structures decorated in the style of Jansson’s illustrations and with reproduced illustrations and archival images. One of these structures was in the form of a house that visitors could walk around and inside to meet the core Moomin characters, and see reproductions of Jansson’s illustrations of them. The other structure was designed to look like an open copy of The Moomins and the Great Flood, the first book Jansson wrote about these characters. This display discussed that book, but also introduced visitors to Jansson herself with archival photos of her life and work as well as biographical information, including her important place in Finnish art history as a queer female artist. Also in this area, a third structure had a built-in monitor showing a tour of the Moomin Museum in Tampere, Finland, which produced this exhibit and has an extensive collection of Moomin art and other pieces related to the characters, such as the six-foot-tall model of the Moomins’ house that Jansson created in 1979.

 

On the first floor, the exhibit continued in the youth wing of the library. In this section, the Moomins took over, with decorations throughout the space. There were two child-sized Moomin play areas, which were perfect for photos. The space also displayed multiple Moomin posters with Jansson’s art and display cases that ran along one wall with various Moomin books open to engaging examples of her art. This space also had a browsable collection of Moomin books in multiple languages available for in-library use.

 

The exhibit continued on the second floor in display cases that lined the balcony overlooking the lobby. These cases included materials related to both Jansson and the Moomins. On one side of the balcony, two examples of Jansson’s other artistic work were displayed alongside letters she wrote to friend and fellow artist Eva Konikoff during Konikoff’s time in New York City. These letters provided a personal insight into Jansson’s life during the early 1940s and also show a connection to the city hosting the exhibit.

 

To the left side of the balcony, several cases highlighted a selection of the products that have featured the Moomins, showing the impressive range of products that have incorporated these characters. These included ceramics by Arabia, created with designs by Jansson’s partner, Tuulikki Pietilä, collectibles released in partnership with Finnair, licensed clothing and jewelry featuring the characters, and a variety of types of toys. Another case focused specifically on the various media that Moomins have appeared in with plays, LPs, games, and cartoons all represented from around the world. This section of the exhibit impressed upon viewers the global reach the characters have had and also the careful stewardship that Jansson and her family have exerted over their licensing.

 

The exhibit delved fairly deeply into Jansson’s biography to offer context for her work and it was this component of the exhibit that probably interested those who have an existing knowledge of the Moomins the most. While the Moomins may be the most eye-catching element of the exhibition, the archival images of Jansson brought her to life in a way that many readers of the Moomin books may not have experienced in the past. Explanatory text introduced viewers to Jansson’s life as a child and offered context for her decision to start working as a freelance editor at age fifteen to help support her family and lessen the burden on her mother, the family’s primary breadwinner. Though this exhibit focused on the Moomins, it went well beyond these characters to explore Jansson’s larger artistic life, highlighting her work as a painter, illustrator for others’ works, and writing for both children and adults. Painting, in particular, was important to Jansson throughout her life and the exhibit made this clear in multiple locations, including by displaying her palette and examples of her paintings. 

 

The exhibit was complemented by programming, not only at the Central Library, but also at other branches of the Brooklyn Public Library system. These programs included children’s craft programs, and programs for adults. On September 16th, Jansson’s niece, Sophia Jansson, was scheduled to lead a guided tour of the exhibit.^[2] As an exhibition hosted by a library, it is no surprise that Jansson’s works were also available in multiple languages for browsing in the library as part of multiple displays across the library and for checkout. These books included not only the Moomin novels, but also her adult fiction and books about her life. Offering these options for library patrons gave those who visited the exhibit a chance to immediately dive into the Moomins’ world and learn more about Jansson’s life and work, which is sure to lead to more lifelong fans. If you’re already a fan of the characters and their author, this exhibit was a worthy glimpse into the 80-year history of the Moomins and the important and impactful life of their creator.

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^[1] Moomin 80. June 6, 2025. The First Ever Moomin and Tove Jansson Exhibition in the U.S. Opens at Brooklyn Public Library. Available at https://www.moomin.com/en/blog/brooklyn-public-library-moomin/#02ac7e82 . Accessed July 3, 2025. However in 2021, IJOCA ran a review of a Moomin exhibit in Washington, DC that can be found at https://ijoca.blogspot.com/2021/12/exhibit-review-moomin-animations.html

^[2] Brooklyn Public Library. nd. Tour of Tove Jansson & The Moomins. Available at https://www.bklynlibrary.org/calendar/tour-tove-jansson-moomins-central-library-dweck-20250916-0700pm. Accessed July 3, 2025.

‘Politicians die, the cartoons live on’ - John Lent profiled in Polynesia

'Politicians die, the cartoons live on'

Saturday 30 August 2025 | Written by Teitimoana Tairi

https://www.cookislandsnews.com/internal/features/art/politicians-die-the-cartoons-live-on/

John A. Lent, professor emeritus at Temple University in Philadelphia, United States, is a novelist and renowned comic art scholar on a mission to document cartoonists from all around the world. TEITIMOANA TAIRI/25082913

A renowned comic art scholar is documenting the history of cartooning in the Cook Islands for his upcoming book, highlighting the importance of preserving the art form and inspiring the next generation of local artists.

A renowned comic art scholar is documenting the history of cartooning in the Cook Islands for his upcoming book, highlighting the importance of preserving the art form and inspiring the next generation of local artists.

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Book Review: Chester Brown

 Reviewed by Christina Pasqua, University of Toronto

Frederik Byrn Køhlert. Chester Brown. University Press of Mississippi, 2025. https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/C/Chester-Brown3

  

Earlier this summer, I bumped into Chester Brown while perusing the aisles at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival. This was not an unusual occurrence, since we both live and work in the same city. I’ve seen him riding past me on his bike downtown and spotted him in line at one of the college book sales on campus. It’s safe to say that Toronto knows Chester Brown and Chester Brown knows Toronto. It’s where he launched his career in the early 1980s, and where back issues of his serialized comics can still be found in boxes at The Beguiling, a local comic shop founded in 1987. Sook-Yin Lee’s recent film adaptation of Brown’s graphic novel Paying For It (2011) stands out as a love letter to how quintessentially Toronto-based both his work is, and that moment in their lives was, especially as key figures in the city’s alternative scene. Frederik Byrn Køhlert’s Chester Brown, fifth in the University Press of Mississippi’sBiographix series, is a concise biography of the cartoonist’s life and work that is very much aware of his rootedness in the city. Early on, Køhlert notes how Brown circulated his self-published mini comics on the streets of Toronto before signing with Vortex Comics in 1986, and that he ran as a Libertarian Party of Canada candidate in the 2008 and 2011 federal elections in his riding. These details speak to larger themes that Køhlert’s book contends with, such as Brown’s fiercely independent and anti-authoritarian spirit, both politically and creatively, leading to the conclusion that when it comes to Chester Brown, it is “nearly impossible to separate the artist from the art” (10). While this can be said about many artists, Køhlert develops this observation into a strong argumentative thread that sustains the book; namely, that Brown is a transgressive thinker and creator with a clear interest in self-examination that he performs through an autobiographical mode that can be traced visually and polemically throughout his career. In particular, the book locates Brown’s self-reflexiveness in his dedicated use of paratextual materials to expand on his arguments about and personal experiences with sex, love, religion, and politics.

That said, the book is well conceptualized into six thematic chapters that place Brown’s life and publications in a chronology that outlines his contributions to the form and the broader status of comics production in Canada through Brown’s relationships with his publisher, Drawn & Quarterly, and cartoonist contemporaries (and friends), Seth and the late Joe Matt. The book’s focus, however, is on the progression of Brown’s career through close readings of his changing visual technique, panel design, and storytelling methods rather than a study of Toronto’s “new wave” of underground comix. The first and second chapter, for example, highlight the narrative incoherence and surrealism of Brown’s early serialized work in Yummy Fur (1983-1994), which expands from fictional stories into esoteric explorations of Christian scriptures, such as the gospels of Mark and Matthew. Køhlert’s attention to the centrality of religion in Brown’s biography as a cartoonist distinguishes it from other critical work on the artist, but effectively shows how religious inquiry is a form of self-expression that resurfaces in Brown’s later work, most obviously Louis Riel (1999), a graphic biography of a nineteenth century Métis figure and mystic who led a rebellion against the Government of Canada, and Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus (2016), a visual adaptation of several biblical stories on sex and disobedience.

Besides religion, another commonality between these publications is Brown’s increasing visual minimalism and emotional restraint evident in the drawing style of both his autobiographical and nonfiction work, the focus of chapters three and four. Køhlert’s main contribution to the literature on Brown is laid out, however, in chapter five and expanded upon in chapter six, which consider the ethics of telling other people’s stories, the emergence of conspiracy thinking in his comics, and, most importantly, “Brown’s penchant for revision,” which Køhlert argues is “an attempt to produce a sense of retroactive continuity around the idea of ‘Chester Brown’” the author, the person, and the character (99). In practice, what this looks like for Brown is thoroughly rewriting, redrawing, and restructuring earlier versions of his comics, including detailed explanations of his visual choices and thought processes in the annotation section of his books, as well as in more intimate venues, such as letter columns and subscription-based social media platforms. Ultimately, what Køhlert’s biography shows through an analysis of various panels from and comparing different editions of Brown’s work is how the cartoonist relies on “the textual and paratextual tools available to him to . . . guide his audience’s understanding of both his comics and his current authorial persona.” (108). In other words, Brown perpetually attempts to craft and control his own narratives and public perception.

For an avid fan, collector, or scholar of Brown’s comics who has read the copious notes that accompany his publications, there is not much in this volume that is new when it comes to his biography and creative process. Much of these details are documented by Brown himself on Patreon and in print, and in the many interviews he has given over his forty-year career. However, Køhlert’s ability to synthesize this material into a cohesive narrative is impressive and important work that will certainly prove useful as a reference text for those who do not have access to or wish to expedite their understanding of this extensive, mostly public archive. That said, I would be curious to read more about Køhlert’s methodology for compiling Brown’s biography. For example, what details were included and excluded, or even omitted? Were new interviews conducted with Brown (and the people who know him) to help fill any gaps in the literature? Although some evidence of this research process is found in the acknowledgments and bibliography sections, as well as in the careful citation of journalistic interviews and academic conversations about Brown and his work, an account of how Køhlert constructed the narrative would be useful. Has Køhlert spoken with Brown? And if so, is he reconstructing the cartoonist’s life and work from the cartoonist’s own constructions?

I raise these questions not as a critique of the book, but rather as an acknowledgement that biographies as a genre often tend to take much of this processual work of coming to know for granted. What’s interesting about writing a biography about a person who openly shares his life and ideas in his comics is that reading his work can feel like one is encountering the author himself. As Kohlert suggests elsewhere, comics produce an “embodiment of the self on the page.” So, if Brown were to run into this version of himself, would he recognize him? And further, would he wish to revise him?

 

 Christina Pasqua is a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Toronto’s Department for the Study of Religion and in the Book History and Print Culture Collaborative Program. She researches and teaches the study of visual Christianities in the Americas. Her current project focuses on the role of creativity and craft in how comic book artists read, interpret, and illustrate biblical stories within the context of their own lives. She also writes about autobiography, Catholic horror, and depictions of gendered bodies in popular culture. Her film criticism on these topics is published in The Revealer.

Book Review: Horror Comics and Religion: Essays Framing the Monstrous and the Divine

reviewed by Philip Smith 

Horror Comics and Religion: Essays Framing the Monstrous and the Divine, edited by Brandon R. Grafius and John W. Morehead, McFarland and Company, 2025. 275 pages. $49.95. https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/horror-comics-and-religion/

Horror Comics and Religion is divided into four sections: ‘The Classics,’ ‘To Hell and Back,’ ‘Beyond Marvel and DC,’ and ‘Breaking the Frames.’ The section divisions seem somewhat arbitrary; the section titled 'Beyond Marvel and DC', for example, does not include the chapter on Monstress (2015-), which is published by Image. The section 'Breaking the Frames' could, in the sense of challenging norms, reasonably house any of the chapters in the volume.

The introductory chapter lays out the terrain primarily in formal terms; horror leverages our emotions through implication; comics use a different language from film because the creator cannot control the speed at which a consumer accesses an image; and comics cannot directly replicate the glimpse of a source of horror as we find in film. In the first chapter, Wetmore argues that EC's horror comics include forms of ironic justice which parallel Christian morality, but meted out by reanimated corpses rather than a Christian God. The forms of punishment are, inevitably, violent, such that the reader is invited to revel in body horror even as justice is done. The second chapter concerns the problem of representing the holy, monstrosity, and the rhetoric of religious justice through the superhero the Spectre. The character, Dean argues, 'is an American answer to criminal evil that is less interested in origins or grand schemes as it is in punishment for moral transgressions being met with the individual creativity of an avenging, nigh-omnipotent angel-cop' (50). The third chapter uses Walter Benjamin's Capitalism and Religion (1921) as a lens to examine From Hell (1989). The argument is persuasive, but Greenaway tends to assume a degree of familiarity with the primary text, making the argument hard to follow at times. McGuire and Possami's chapter, concerns the depiction of exorcisms in comics. Chireau draws upon a range of (in many cases previously unexplored) texts and links mid-twentieth century comics to coeval media. The chapter persuasively demonstrate that the depiction of Voodoo in Golden Age horror comics embodied contemporary anti-Black racism.

In the second section, Holdsworth uses a framework of Biblical and Christian writings concerning parent-child relationships to argue that Gaiman's depiction of (fallen) angels in The Sandman (1999-2015) series suggests a Creator who is 'too powerful to be a healthy human father and too fallible to be a divine one' (121). Gaiman's Lucifer, she asserts, is 'a twisted Peter Pan figure - an eternally abused child with no way to grow up' (122). In the seventh chapter, Foster uses a Christian reading of René Girard's mimetic theory to interpret Ghost Rider: The War for Heaven (2019). FitzGerald approaches Monstress through Eduardo Viveros de Castro's concept of 'multinatiralism'; an understanding of animality as connected to and in dialogue with humanity, Taussig's concept of 'subjecthood', Kristeva's abject theory, and some Foucault. The ultimate conclusion is that Monstress blurs distinctions between self/other, human/animal, and mortal/divine, although the path to this conclusion is, at times, hard to follow and would have benefitted from more signposting. (The four pages of footnotes which follow further suggest that the argument needed tightening).

In the third section, Akagi analyses the blurring of distinctions between life and death in the manga series Another (2009), which he contrasts with passages from Revelations. Cowan argues that Junji Ito's horror manga express a logic which aligns with a religious world-view. Mukhopadhyay's essay on the (mis)representation of tantrik in popular culture is a useful introduction to the actual practice of tantra and the ways in which popular portrayals represent a misunderstanding. The discussion of City of Sorrows (2014-2018) as a counter to such discourse, comes a little late in the chapter but is nonetheless illuminating.

In the final section, Cooper analyses Angle's The Devil is a Handsome Man (2018-2019) in terms of the abject, in particular body horror related to the eyes. Meletiadis writes on Jeff Lemire's Gideon Falls (2018-2020) through the idea of the ineffable as expressed through Manichaeism, Gnosticism, and Lovecraftian cosmic horror (although he asserts of the chapter 'there is no overall argument here' (233)). Anderson reads the Biblical references in Emily Carroll's His Face All Red and My Friend Janna (2014), arguing that Carroll destabilizes Christian imagery (Cain and Abel, the Resurrection and so on) and spiritualism as an uncanny warning against upsetting the conventional order.

Overall, I found the book to vary in quality; Chireau's chapter on Voodoo ('a horror conceived by whiteness' (90)) is specific in its scope and well-argued. Anderson’s chapter is similarly illuminating. Other chapters are weaker; FitzGerald's chapter on Monstress and Meletiadis' chapter on Gideon Falls are needlessly fawning of their subjects employing phrasing such as 'quintessentially, irresistibly, deliciously uncanny' (143) and 'a virtuoso performance' (231). Such overblown praise, I would argue, adds little information, gives up any pretense of scholarly objectivity, and asserts overtly what might otherwise be suggested through the argument. McGuire and Possami's chapter seeks out trends in the depiction of exorcisms in comics, seeks to find a consistent message between works from a diverse range of sociocultural contexts and genres (horror, superhero, science fiction, the 1970s, the early twenty-first century, America, France, and Japan). The conclusion that 'in the comic book narratives, the supernatural exorcism is more often successful if conducted by a [sic] exorcist with individual charismatic power' (83) risks collapsing the differences between these linguistically, culturally, and historically discrete works.

The volume largely cleaves to the orthodoxy that horror comics are inherently subversive (e.g. 'EC comics subversively critiqued middle-class morality' (20)). At points, however, authors show some tendency to challenge this idea; Wetmore notes that justice in EC comics is generally retributive; a violent reinforcement, rather than critique of, mid-twentieth-century white American Christian morality. Elsewhere in the volume, Chireau argues that while EC and those who followed offered 'subversive treatments of religious bigotry and racial prejudice' (98) they nonetheless depicted 'the threat of religious contagion [...] and the impacts of racial transgression on ethnically compromised white Americans' (99).

The greatest weakness of the volume is the apparent lack of editorial polish manifest in typographical errors such as 'Of course, the is true...' (48), 'people have since that time have become...' (80), and 'non-vegetarian food, especially fish and meet' (206). There are also several difficult to parse sentences such as 'These techniques, while extending to the presentation of several characters, appear most extensively in the portrayal of Misaki and Sakakibara and may be considered according to these two characters to illustrate.' (162). These errors do not wholly invalidate the often insightful and original arguments, but they are distracting and suggest too light an editorial hand. They also weaken the authority of the volume; the lack of care which gives rise to typographical issues may suggest similar weaknesses in scholarship. Indeed, Cowan's assertion that Junji Ito's works are 'less well-known in the West' (177) jarred with my own experience in Angoulême in 2023, when I witnessed hundreds of Western comics fans queueing in the cold for hours so they could see Ito at work.

Philip Smith is the author of Reading Art Spiegelman (Routledge 2015), Shakespeare in Singapore (Routledge 2020), and co-author of Printing Terror: American Horror Comics as Cold War Commentary and Critique (Manchester UP, 2021). He has served as co-director of the Shakespeare Behind Bars program at The Correctional Facility at Fox Hill, Nassau, Bahamas, fight choreographer for the Shakespeare in Paradise festival, and an executive board member for the Comics Studies Society. He is Chair of Liberal Arts and Professor of English at Savannah College of Art and Design. He is editor in chief of Literature Compass.