I'm an avid and indiscriminate Jansson fan (I love all her books) and am grateful that the cartoon strips are now available. Thanks to Drawn and Quarterly for having gone to the trouble and expense of compiling this outstanding series.
Yes, the cartoon strips are a different world than the books. The strips, rather than being children's stories that adults love, are social satires, wholly appropriate for the daily newspapers. They must have been one of the few comic strips to achieve that level of farce and social commentary. They comment on many of the fads and cultural obsessions of the 1950s, including UFOs, social clubs, self-help, family vacations, Hollywood starlets, consumerism, gurus, spies, keeping up with the Joneses, and psychiatry. They are wry commentaries, albeit loving, about our human foibles. Despite their quirkiness, the Moomin magic and charm remain. Many critics go so far as to proclaim Jansson to be a forerunner of the modern graphic novel.
My reservation about Volume 5, however, is in the production, not the content. The publisher seems to have done a sloppy job compiling the strips because in two places, strips are incorrectly placed. Panel 44 of "Moomin Under Sail" (page 44) is actually a duplicated panel 44 from the first story, "Moomin Winter" (page 18). The real panel 44 from "Moomin Under Sail" is, therefore, missing. Also, panel 80 from the final story, "Fuddler's Courtship" (page 81), is a duplicated panel 80 from the second story, "Moomin Under Sail" (page 53) -- which means that two complete panels are missing from the book. This is sloppy production work -- and I'm hoping that Drawn and Quarterly will make the missing panels available to readers who would like a REALLY complete edition of Moomin: The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip.