In Running from Wonderland, Mihai Marza stages an exhilarating collision between comic book order and psychedelic chaos. At the heart of the canvas, Tintin—Hergé’s ever-curious boy reporter—clutches his loyal dog Snowy as they sprint from an undefined peril. Their neatly inked forms, lifted directly from the ligne claire tradition, are surrounded not by villains or danger, but by an encroaching eruption of swirling red-and-white mushroom caps—oversized, dreamlike, and unmistakably hallucinogenic. The background, dominated by these warped toadstools, evokes a surreal threat: a Wonderland that is no longer wondrous. With its bold, almost biological textures and ballooning circular forms, the space becomes claustrophobic, as if logic and narrative structure are melting at the edges. It is as though Tintin has stumbled out of his clean-cut panels and into an altered dimension where his linear logic no longer applies. The yellow diamond framing the protagonist—angular and abrupt—functions like a temporal glitch, freezing the chase in a moment of comedic alarm. A speech bubble containing only a question mark adds to the ambiguity: what is he fleeing from? Or toward? This symbol of confusion becomes a stand-in for all of us dropped into surreal, overstimulated spaces with no script to follow. Marza’s palette is pop-vibrant: crimson, white, and cartoon primaries collide with surgical precision. Yet despite the humor, there’s a lurking tension— perhaps a commentary on innocence under siege, on classic heroism outpaced by psychedelic complexity. Tintin, forever the rational explorer, is now caught in a narrative where meaning mutates, where symbols refuse to behave. In Running from Wonderland, Marza dissects nostalgia and injects it with disorder. The painting is at once playful and disquieting, a riff on adventure storytelling in an era where the map dissolves as fast as it’s drawn. It is not just a homage—it is a disruption. Wonderland isn’t where he meant to go. But it’s where we all end up. And Marza