The Moomins saw life in many forms but debuted to its biggest audience ever on the pages of world's largest newspaper the London Evening News, in 1954. The strip was syndicated in newspapers around the world with millions of readers in 40 countries.Moomin Book One is the first volume of Drawn & Quarterly publishing plan to reprint the entire strip drawn by Jansson before she handed over the reigns to her brother Lars in 1960. This is the first time the strip will be published in any form in North America and will deservedly place Jansson among the international cartooning greats of the last century.The Moomins are a tight-knit family — hippo-shaped creatures with easygoing and adventurous outlooks. Jansson's art is pared down and precise, yet able to compose beautiful portraits of ambling creatures in fields of flowers or rock-strewn beaches that recall Jansson's Nordic roots. The comic strip reached out to adults with its gentle and droll sense of humor. Whimsical but with biting undertones, Jansson's observations of everyday life, including guests who overstay their welcome, modern art, movie stars, and high society, easily caught the attention of an international audience and still resonate today.

    The Moomins try to hibernate in the fashion of their ancestors but insomnia places them smack-dab into a winter carnival with the winter-sports-loving Mr. Brisk. The fickle and eternally lovestruck Mymble and Snorkmaiden find themselves in competition over a thrilling new man. Moominmamma meets her new neighbor, the Fillyjonk, causing her to hire the depressed and secretive Misabel as her new maid. Mymble's mother arrives on the Moomin family's doorstep with her seventeen new children. Finally, a prophet arrives on the scene declaring that the happy Moomins are in fact not happy at all and need to get back to nature and be free. Moomin, of course, becomes more and more miserable the freer he gets.Jansson is revered around the world as one of the foremost children's authors of the twentieth centry for her illustrated Moomin chapter books. The Drawn & Quarterly reprint series collects, for the first time in North America, Jansson's internationally syndicated Moomin comic strip that debuted in the London Evening News in 1954.

    Mizuki's childhood experiences with yokai influenced the course of his life and oeuvre; he is now known as the forefather of yokai manga. His spring 2011 book, Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths, was featured on PRI's The World, where Marco Werman scored a coveted interview with one of the most famous visual artists working in Japan today.Within the pages of NonNonBa, Mizuki explores the legacy left him by his childhood explorations of the spirit world, explorations encouraged by his grandmother, a grumpy old woman named NonNonBa. NonNonBa is a touching work about childhood and growing up, as well as a fascinating portrayal of Japan in a moment of transition. NonNonBa was the first manga to win the Angoulême Prize for Best Album. Much like its namesake, NonNonBa is at once funny and nostalgic, firmly grounded in a sociohistorical context and floating in the world of the supernatural.

    At no time have parents had a greater arsenal of child-rearing manuals and educational tools at their disposal, and yet the generation gap still yawns and the huge questions continue to go unanswered. Has the permissive age helped us to live with our children? Do we, even now, know who they are?Here is Thelwell's answer - a book devoted solely to the children. Heedless of personal danger, he has studied them in their natural environment and fearlessly interpreted for us the mysteries and rituals of the widespread but exclusive sub-race - their suspicion of grown-ups, their strange love of animals, their internecine struggles; showing how, if we cannot always win their affection, we may at least survive the encounter.Whether you love children or hate them, whether you are parent or relative, friend or foe, here is your opportunity to learn - and laugh. You may never be a child again, but Thelwell's Brat Race offers a vivid reminder of what the joys of childhood and the agonies of parenthood are all about.

    Natural comic book series resumes for one more issue, which compiles weekly strips that originally appeared in New York's Village Voice.