Though the comic captures the feel of the Moomin novels, it is set in a separate continuity, and its canon differs from the books in a few ways. It is aimed at an adult audience, compared to the original books and later TV series which were mostly intended for children. Despite this, many adaptations manage to make the comic's stories fit into the same universe as the novels, slightly altering some details to make up for the plot inconsistencies and Bowdlerizing the darker elements.
In 2014, an animated film, Moomins on the Riviera, was released, based mostly on the comic arc of the same name but with aspects, plot points and even characters from several other story arcs.
The Moomin comics provide examples of:
- Actually Not a Vampire: The "vampire" in "Moomin and the Vampire" is actually just a bat.
- Adaptational Dumbass: The Moomins, particularly Moominpappa. They're far more likely to grab the Idiot Ball or start Comically Missing the Point than in the books.
- Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: Early on, between Moomintroll and Snufkin. For Snufkin's first two appearances, they aren't particularly close — in the very first storyline, they part on bad terms, and in the second Snufkin seems more bemused with the Moomin family than anything. After that, Snufkin is gone from the strip for a long time — but when he returns for his third appearance, he and Moomintroll are suddenly depicted as having the same deep friendship as they have elsewhere in the franchise.
- Ascended Extra:
- Mymble plays a much bigger role in the comic strip than she did in the books, making this the only incarnation of the Moomins where you're more likely to see Mymble than Little My or Snufkin in a story.
- Shadow spends the early parts of the strip following the characters around and providing Funny Background Events without being acknowledged by the narrative or the characters — until Moomintroll in one strip turns to him and asks who he is and why he keeps following them around. Shadow is astonished someone noticed he was there, and afterwards becomes a full fledged supporting character who plays crucial roles in a few story arcs.
- The Jumble initially appeared in "The Fuddler's Courtship" to serve as a Deus ex Machina with her characterization being limited to being a Distaff Counterpart to the Fuddler. However, she serves as main character in "Fuddler and Married Life", which expands on her personality and relationship with the Fuddler.
- Awful Wedded Life: The "Fuddler and Married Life" has the Jumble and the Fuddler get married. Their marriage is awful due to the Jumble's constant henpecking and twisting the Fuddler's words; and Fuddler's general inability to do anything aside from button collecting. Both the Fuddler and the Jumble decide to get a divorce and only decide against since it would mean dividing their button collection.
- A Bloody Mess: In "Moominmamma's Maid" a detective randomly walks into the Moomins' house and sees a red puddle, thinking it to be blood. Moominmamma assures him that it's only jam and he walks off embarrassed.
- Brick Joke: In one adventure, the Moomins went back in time to king Arthur's time. Early on they meet Merlin who warns them about the "long noses". When the Moomins ask about their identity a somewhat puzzled Merlin says that would be the Moomins themself. At the end of the adventure the pagan Saxons invade and when the Moomins meet them they turn out to be their Arthurian ancestors.
- Butterfly of Doom: Parodied in the first time-travel story. The Moomins bungle around The Wild West, only armed with waterguns — when they return back to their own time, it turns out that their misadventures led to waterguns becoming incredibly popular. In the new timeline, everyone owns a watergun (Sniff even informs Moominmamma that she owns two!).
- Canon Foreigner: Quite a few characters were created for the comic strip; a lot of one-shot characters and quite a few recurring ones. Some of these characters (like Misabel, Pimple/Sorry-oo, Stinky, Mrs. Fillyjonk and the Police Chief) would become iconic members of the cast in their own right and often even make it into the books in some form; others (like the pirates, Whimsy, Mr Brisk, and Shadow) remained mainly comic strip characters.
- Comically Missing the Point: A prominent trait of the Moomins in this incarnation, especially early in the strip. It's a bit of a Character Exaggeration compared to the original books, where they would occasionally misunderstand things (generally because nobody bothered to explain things properly to them), but here they take it much further. In the first storyline a homeless Moomintroll is arrested and put in jail — and all the time he's happy and grateful that the nice policeman let him live in his house.
- Composite Character: Too-Ticky, in a couple of storylines, takes over the role of Hodgkins from the books.
- Darker and Edgier: While the original Moomin novels were aimed at children, the comics are meant for an adult audience and feature darker themes and more Black Comedy. "Moomin and Family Life", for starters, has Moomintroll attempting Suicide by Sea, which is treated as a joke (since he just floats on the water).
- Deliberately Distressed Damsel: Snorkmaiden's Damsel in Distress antics are Played for Laughs as she is portrayed as a silly romantic who loves getting kidnapped and rescued. In fact the "rescued" part might be optional.
- Demoted to Extra: Many of the characters who play major roles in the books are fairly minor characters here, only showing up for the occasional storyline — most notably Little My and especially Snufkin, who play much smaller roles here than in most other incarnations. The Moomins and Snork Maiden are the only characters who play large roles in the majority of the stories; Sniff is probably the most prominent supporting character and even he might be absent from the strip for several months at a time.
- Denser and Wackier: The comics' stories are often more outlandish and contain more gags than the books. Crosses over with Darker and Edgier, largely due to a lot of Black Comedy.
- Deus ex Machina: In "The Fuddler's Courtship" arc, the Jumble, who had never appeared in the comic before, randomly shows up and becomes the Fuddler's girlfriend, thus resolving the plot.
- Era-Specific Personality: Some of the characters had slightly altered personalities compared to the books; Moomintroll became more of a Deadpan Snarker and a lot more prone to jealousy, while Snork Maiden underwent some Character Exaggeration and grew vainer and sillier. The most startling change was to Sniff; far from the cowardly and childish Butt-Monkey of the books, the comic's Sniff is a shifty and amoral Karma Houdini who's always trying out new Zany Schemes to get rich. Mymble is also drastically altered; she's gone from a gentle eccentric to a hopeless romantic who's In Love with Love and Really Gets Around.
- Fantastic Drug: In one story arc, the Moomin family buys mind-expanding "LBJ pills" from a bunch of hippies. Other than that, the comic tends to avert this trope, though: before purchasing the LBJ pills the Moomins try to buy some marijuana, in another story arc the Police Hemulen's nephew gets high on opium, and the Moomins are often shown making their own moonshine.
- Fixing the Game: In "Moomin and the TV", Snorkmaiden and Moominpappa go onto a gameshow, where the host tries to rig the game against them by giving them all the hard questions while giving their opponents the easy questions. However, this fails due to a combination of Moominpappa and Snorkmaiden's knowledge of obscure trivia; and their opponents being very stupid.
- Fourth-Wall Observer: The characters know they're in a comic and will occasionally comment on it. One storyline begins with the Moomins looking for something to start a new and exciting story with for fear that the readers will get bored, and in another storyline Sniff refuses to get Mrs Fillyjonk involved because she's been over-used in the stories and they need "something new."
- Have a Gay Old Time: When Mrs. Fillyjonk first sees Moominpappa, she thinks to herself that she was "warned... that the neighbors were queer". In this context, she means "weird", which is how the word was used at the time.
- Henpecked Husband: The Fuddler becomes this in "Fuddler and the Married Life".
- Hot Drink Cure: In "Moomin's Winter Follies", Moomintroll catches a cold and is put to bed with a hot drink.
- Identical Grandson: The Fuddler and the Muddler (the Fuddler's father) look exactly the same. This is even Played for Laughs when we see the Fuddler next to a picture of the Muddler and they look exactly the same.
- Idiot Ball: The Moomins' intelligence is significantly lower in the newspaper comic strips, and it shows.
- Illness Blanket: In "Moomin the Colonist", after throwing a bucket of water over the squabbling Council, Moominmamma wraps them in blankets and gives them hot coffee to stop them from catching cold.
- Interrupted Suicide: The second storyline starts with a rather bleak note, as Moomintroll tries to drown himself, only to bump into his long lost parents before succeeding.
- I Was Beaten by a Girl: In "Moomin's Winter Follies", the Mymble falls for the sports-loving Mr. Brisk, only to accidentally drive him to despair after beating him in a skiing contest. Moomintroll and his friends spend the rest of the story trying (with varying degrees of success) to cheer up Mr. Brisk.
- Mooning: Each long-term arc begins with a panel of Moomintroll's butt.
- Mushroom Samba: The original comics had the family take a vacation in "Torrelorca", where they ended up experimenting with made up but still obviously illegal drugs which were said to "free their true selves", which in their case just meant that they sat on a beach a week straight, staring at the sun and as a result missed their flight back home. In the animated adaption, they instead found some mushrooms that spread their spores around and caused whoever inhaled them to become listless and easily amused.
- New Technology Is Evil:
- This crops up in "Moomin and the Golden Tail". Moominmamma gains modern kitchen appliances. However, they are so complicated that she can't figure how they are supposed to work. As such, she willingly gives them up to settle a lawsuit.
- "Moomin and the TV" is about Moominpappa and Snorkmaiden becoming obsessed with television.
- No Ending: "Fuddler and Married Life" ends with the Jumble and the Fuddler deciding not to get a divorce. However, they don't resolve the issues making their marriage miserable.
- One-Steve Limit: Averted. There are two characters named "Mymble". note
- Planimal: In "Moominvalley Turns Jungle", there's a carnivorous bush that happens to have eyes and legs. Two Hemulens, one a botanist and the other a zoologist, get in an argument over whether it's a plant or animal.
- Remember the New Guy?: Late in Tove's run, she begins introducing characters and elements from the books into the comic strip. However, the characters act like they've always been there. For example, in "Moomin and the Golden Tail", Moomin encounters Gaffsie and acts like they know each other despite this being her first appearance in the comic strip.
- Take That!:
- "Moomin on the Riviera" critiques the culture of the Riviera and the art world. A good example would be how the owners of the hotel are ecstatic to get one of the Marquis' carved elephants...until they find out he made more than one, and tell the Moomins it makes it worthless. They're appropriately baffled.
- "Moomin and the Golden Tail" features jabs at the concept of merchandising.
- "Moomin and the TV" portrays television as addictive and turning people into naive idiots. The same arc portrays beatniks as self-important Jerkasses who ramble about how intelligent they supposedly are and complain about the current state of the world, without providing solutions.
- Time Machine: The Moomins have a time machine in the newspaper comic and there are occasional storylines where they travel back in time to some historical epoch — usually because Moominpappa is sick of modern life and longs for the glory and romance of times long past. In every single one of these storylines he'd discover that the "good old days" weren't as good, glorious or romantic as he'd imagined them.
- Trivial Title: The story arc "Moomin and the Brigands" mainly focuses on Moomin and Sniff trying various Get-Rich-Quick Schemes after Stinky destroys Moomin's house, as well as Moomin's first encounter with the Snorkmaiden. The brigands only show up near the end.
- Token Evil Teammate: Sniff borders on this at times. He's not malicious, just untrustworthy, self-centered, lacking in empathy, and obsessed with making money.
- Torches and Pitchforks: "Moomin and the Vampire" ends with the Moomins and Snorkmaiden being chased by an angry mob for lying about killing the vampire.
- Writer Behind the Times: "Moomin and the TV" features an extended jab at beatniks and the Beat Generation... in 1964. By that time, the beatniks had been replaced by hippies.
- Whatever Happened to the Mouse?: In "Moomin Goes Wild West", Moomin is saved by The Chief's Daughter, who has fallen in love with him. However, she doesn't appear in the next strip and doesn't appear ever again in the comic with no explanation.
- Your Size May Vary:
- Both Little My and Shadow fluctuate in size a lot. About the only thing that's consistent is that they're the two smallest characters — other than that, how big they are, or even which of them is the taller one, depends entirely on the panel. It's especially prominent with Little My who in some panels is small enough to hide inside Moominmamma's teapot, and in other panels reaches Moominmamma almost to the shoulders.
- A more subtle example occurs with the Moomins and Snorkmaiden. In "Fuddler's Courtship", they are only slightly taller than a coffee tin, yet they are the size of humans in "Moomin Goes Wild West".