An Introduction
Well, hello there!
Welcome to Paper Hats, a Moomin fancomic project written and drawn by @janetkwallace for the purpose of showcasing his/her/their artistic talents by transforming words into images, which may or may not accurately reflect each other, but which are somehow connected.
What is Paper Hats?
Paper Hats is a Moomin fanfiction I've been writing since 2022. You can read it on Archive of Our Own (AO3).
The title came from a song by This Heat, one of my favorite bands at the time I wrote the first drafts. So far, it has eight chapters in total and, at some point, I thought "what if I adapted this story into a comic book?", and that's how it all began.
And what's the story about? What are the themes?
Well, it began as a study of Mrs. Fillyjonk's character, an exploration of her worries and fears, whether a person's negative traits define their entire being and how someone feels after doing something wrong. The overall tone is borrowed from Moominpappa at Sea and November in Moominvalley, both novels which featured a melancholic and somber mood. I enjoy writing introspective characters and how they sort out thoughts, manage disorders, express their feelings, and this story is about states of mind, reflected in the writing and art style.
The writing
Stream of consciousness. Lots and lots of stream of consciousness, combined with introspection, nostalgia, existentialism and the absurd that is to think, act and feel about things. I try to make the characters as sympathetic as possible while not denying their flaws. And speaking of flaws, Paper Hats is a story about characters reflecting on their wrongdoing, what it means to them and others.
The artwork
Most of the comic is made up of individual pieces of art that somehow interconnect to tell a story. The text exists to complement the art, while the art exists to illustrate various meanings based on the text chosen for the page. Sometimes the text and artwork do not match at all, but they exist with each other. Eh, it's very experimental, and a lot of the artwork is there to translate emotions that always change shape, size, color, everything.
The inspiration for this comic came after I read "Wake Up", a Daredevil comic written by Brian Michael Bendis and drawn by David Mack. The artwork of those comics has a dreamy, oneiric look, which I'm very fond of.
Artistic influences
Besides Tove Jansson, here’s a few: Francis Bacon, Bill Sienkiewicz, August Natterer, Barry Windsor-Smith, Hirō Isono, Deryk Thomas, Paul Klee, to name a few.
Chapter index (A list of the comics I've finished so far)
