Tove Jansson was studying in Stockholm and living with her Swedish relatives, her uncle tried to stop her pilfering food by telling her that a "Moomintroll" lived in the kitchen closet and breathed cold air down people's necks. In 1952, after "Comet in Moominland" and "Finn Family Moomintroll" had been translated into English, a British publisher asked if Tove Jansson would be interested in drawing comic strips about the Moomins. Jansson had already drawn a long Moomin comic adventure, "Mumintrollet och jordens undergång" ("Moomintrolls and the End of the World"), based loosely on "Comet in Moominland", for the Swedish-language newspaper "Ny Tid",
Tove Jansson captured on several hours of film, shot by Pietilä. Several documentaries have been made of this footage, the latest being "Haru, yksinäinen saari" ("Haru, the lonely island") (1998) and "Tove ja Tooti Euroopassa" ("Tove and Tooti in Europe") (2004). Jansson died on 27 June 2001 at the age of 86 from cancer and is buried with her parents and younger brother Lars. She is buried in the Hietaniemi Cemetery in Helsinki. Tove Jansson worked as an illustrator and cartoonist for the Swedish-language satirical magazine "Garm" from the 1930s to 1953. One of her political cartoons achieved a brief international fame: