What do you think?
Rate this book
Homebodies
Vintage TV tie-in paperback
92 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1954
1 person is currently reading
347 people want to read
About the author
Charles Addams
57 books230 followersThe macabre humor and Gothic settings characterized many cartoons, first apparent in the New Yorker, of known American cartoonist Charles Samuel Addams.
Chas Addams best created "The Addams Family" comic characters, adapted for a variety of media. His signature style involved single panels.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles...
Chas Addams best created "The Addams Family" comic characters, adapted for a variety of media. His signature style involved single panels.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles...
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
December 28, 2022
Some of these have references that don't make sense in today's world, but the dark humor in most stands the test of time. The one thing I don't like at all is the recurrent them that seems so anti-Addams family - spouses who hate each other and picture each other's deaths. I love the adoration that Gomez and Morticia have for each other, and those comics took me right out of that.
November 4, 2012
I'll admit I didn't get all the jokes--cultural/historical context lacking. But the dark humor is lovely. A quick read.
January 1, 2016
I am a huge fan of the Addams family, and this was a great addition to my collection!
July 11, 2023
The Family that would be Addams set the standard in this collection for a macabre sense of humor, without actually making up even a majority of the subjects of its cartoons. In between their appearances, there are gags about space aliens, murder fantasies, and mad science run amok. Many of the scenes are rich with visually interesting details, and the visual punchline is often so subtly integrated among them that the cartoon transcends shock value, and genuinely unsettles as much as it amuses.
Charles Addams' best work is justly iconic of the 1950s satirical horror aesthetic, with hints of the uncanny, weird, and grotesque only barely hidden by mundane conformity. But less inspired examples are also included, including a few cartoons with offensively drawn "cannibals." Jokes about primitive indigenous people have a long history in this format, and but in comparison to later comics like The Far Side (clearly indebted to Addams in many respects), these "natives" are remarkably crude, inhuman, and devilish. Unlike the (exclusively) white urbanites and suburbanites elsewhere, they do not read as real people, even by the standards of a cartoon reality.
In spite of such dated and distasteful attributes, this volume really is a classic. There is less Addams Family content than the cover might lead you to expect, but on the whole it's an intriguing document of the spooky side of the atomic age.
Charles Addams' best work is justly iconic of the 1950s satirical horror aesthetic, with hints of the uncanny, weird, and grotesque only barely hidden by mundane conformity. But less inspired examples are also included, including a few cartoons with offensively drawn "cannibals." Jokes about primitive indigenous people have a long history in this format, and but in comparison to later comics like The Far Side (clearly indebted to Addams in many respects), these "natives" are remarkably crude, inhuman, and devilish. Unlike the (exclusively) white urbanites and suburbanites elsewhere, they do not read as real people, even by the standards of a cartoon reality.
In spite of such dated and distasteful attributes, this volume really is a classic. There is less Addams Family content than the cover might lead you to expect, but on the whole it's an intriguing document of the spooky side of the atomic age.
August 22, 2023
One of my great accomplishments in Portland was picking up a tiny collection of Addams cartoons from the New Yorker; I became enamored of these after stumbling on an anthology of his work at a university library. This is a fun little book but because it’s a microscopic paperback there isn’t much material and you have to squint to see what’s there, but I’m really glad to add something of his to my modest collection of comic stuff. What I really need is one of the bigger, more extensive volumes like what I saw at UNCW. Anyway these are macabre and funny. Stay tuned.
July 30, 2025
This beautiful paperback has sat on a shelf for years and beyond skimming through a few times I’ve never sat down to read it. There are so many drawings I’ve never seen in here and would love to have framed on my wall. As some others have mentioned there are some comics that I couldn’t really understand in here probably due to some missing context of the times, but there is enough wonderfully bleak and dark humor to make up for it.
November 24, 2020
Most of these comics were either printed in previous Addams books or have since been reprinted in new anthologies in the 1990s-2000s, so I wouldn't seek it out again the way I have other Addams books. However, the few that are original to this volume are just as funny as Addams' other work.
November 16, 2023
While I'm not a big fan of the Addams Family, I developed an appreciation for Charles Addams' work after seeing an exhibit about it last December. (He has a lot of cartoons that are not Addams Family.) I enjoyed his sense of humor in this collection, even if there were a few here I didn't get.
May 30, 2017
A ton of gems. You can even kinda understand how the racist ones could theoretically be funny if they weren't racist.
October 12, 2020
Classic dark, comic humor. Again I understood most of the jokes, some were perplexing no matter how long I contemplated them.
August 22, 2022
Great assortment of darkly comic stories. A fun read with excellent illustrations.
March 17, 2023
There is no other cartoonist as consistently funny.
December 6, 2025
shame about the comics that are incredibly fucking racist.
December 28, 2021
another fun mix of Addams Family cartoons and many dark and clever one off gags.
Fun time waster.
Fun time waster.
September 18, 2011
The book is a series of mostly 1 panel page length illustrations Charles Addams drew for the New Yorker in the 40s and 50s. Some of them feature his most famous creations The Addams Family but most do not, while all feature his brilliant sense of humour.
Some of the best from this book include:
A couple opening the door on Halloween to a short alien saying "I'm sorry, sonny. We've run out of candy" while the wider picture shows the landscape swarming with aliens and the skies filled with alien spacecraft.
Pugsley and Wednesday (while the Addams family are in the book, they are unnamed at this point in Addams' career) building a large fire in the fireplace while Gomez and Morticia look on smiling "The little dears! They still believe in Santa Claus".
A 50s version of "To Catch a Predator" where a policeman holds up a book to the man in the doorway asking "Are you the Arthur Johnson who lost his diary?" while dozens of policemen wait in the shadows.
There's a sketch that was used on the Simpsons 40 years after Addams drew it of Wednesday fixing a shark fin onto Pugsley before he jumps into the river where other kids are playing (Homer: "Aaah Sharkboy!").
A father smiling indulgently to his son stood in the doorway looking anxious, saying "I give up, Robert. What does have two horns, one eye, and creeps?" while on the stairs is a grotesque monster.
Uncle Fester taking the kids fishing; Pugsley is carrying a box of dynamite.
Passengers on a train looking out of the window to see a giant child with a giant train set controller.
The drawings and humour feel very contemporary but are more than 50 years old. I enjoyed the hell out of this book and can see how far ahead Charles Addams was in terms of his work and how he's gone on to influence so many artists in his wake. It's a shame that there isn't an up to date version of his work, a retrospective or compendium of his best stuff, because the used prices for his books are astronomical. Still, if you can find them in your library or see them in a second hand bookshop I highly recommend his work. Very funny, very well drawn, a true classic comics pioneer.
Some of the best from this book include:
A couple opening the door on Halloween to a short alien saying "I'm sorry, sonny. We've run out of candy" while the wider picture shows the landscape swarming with aliens and the skies filled with alien spacecraft.
Pugsley and Wednesday (while the Addams family are in the book, they are unnamed at this point in Addams' career) building a large fire in the fireplace while Gomez and Morticia look on smiling "The little dears! They still believe in Santa Claus".
A 50s version of "To Catch a Predator" where a policeman holds up a book to the man in the doorway asking "Are you the Arthur Johnson who lost his diary?" while dozens of policemen wait in the shadows.
There's a sketch that was used on the Simpsons 40 years after Addams drew it of Wednesday fixing a shark fin onto Pugsley before he jumps into the river where other kids are playing (Homer: "Aaah Sharkboy!").
A father smiling indulgently to his son stood in the doorway looking anxious, saying "I give up, Robert. What does have two horns, one eye, and creeps?" while on the stairs is a grotesque monster.
Uncle Fester taking the kids fishing; Pugsley is carrying a box of dynamite.
Passengers on a train looking out of the window to see a giant child with a giant train set controller.
The drawings and humour feel very contemporary but are more than 50 years old. I enjoyed the hell out of this book and can see how far ahead Charles Addams was in terms of his work and how he's gone on to influence so many artists in his wake. It's a shame that there isn't an up to date version of his work, a retrospective or compendium of his best stuff, because the used prices for his books are astronomical. Still, if you can find them in your library or see them in a second hand bookshop I highly recommend his work. Very funny, very well drawn, a true classic comics pioneer.
Read
July 12, 2015I can't rate or review this--the cartoons didn't fare well in their journey to a small paperback format. Fully half were undecipherable. The ones I could see were vaguely amusing and in their time, side-splitting. But I'd seen the TV series, which spoiled them.
May 13, 2012
dark humor, Addams Family style
June 4, 2013
Chas Addams, the greatest of them all, them being cartoonists.
Read
July 27, 2018Always a pleasure to read Charles Addams.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews