The Penguin Charles Addams

by Charles Addams

Charles Addams is most famous for what spun off from his comics, the popular 1964-1966 TV show The Addams Family, and the two 1990s movies of the same name. And this collection contains many of the 'Family' cartoons, originally printed in the New Yorker magazine. Most of the cartoons hinge on a quirkiness bordering on the surreal — often with some sort of deformity as the pivot point — but not all of them are macabre. An artist sculpting an angel out of stone calls out the window “Same time next Monday, then, Mrs Grant?” Some are subtle, such as a row of sheets hanging outside a house with eye-holes cut out of them, and some are plain racist (less said about those, the better). Some are of, shall we say, limited humour, such as a nurse poking her head out of a delivery room door to announce “It's a baby!”
The strength is definitely the Addams Family cartoons — a whole cinema full of people crying and Uncle Fester laughing, Pugsley and Wednesday returning from summer camp in pet travellers, and Morticia Addams' parting advice to the babysitter “…keep your back to the walls at all times.”

Genres: Comics, Cartoon

124 pages, Mass Market Paperback

Published January 1, 1962

About the author

The 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...

Reviews

[Colin]

Mm, delicious poison

[Sjervey]

It may take a jaded person to delight in Addams casual juxtaposition of the commonplace and the macabre. If so, I gleefully plead guilty.

[Lostshadows]

I use to love this collection when I was a kid, but a lot of these cartoons have not aged well.

[Ajay]

A fun short illustrated read. Those who know the awesome cartoon series ‘The Addams Family’ will definitely know all the reference made in the illustrations.

[Violet]

I greatly appreciate Charles Addams' style of drawing and dark sense of humour. This book is an enjoyable and quick read.

[Lynsey Walker]

Wonderful!

My humour basically drawn on the page in cartoon form.

Also gives me a better appreciation of how close the aesthetic of the 90’s films are to these drawings.

[Kerri]

Review soon!

[Canavan]

✭✭✭½

[Renée]

love it