photo © Thomas Raven
I’ve recently become more interested in the original Charles Addams cartoons that inspired the Addams Family TV series, an animated series, and several feature films. After watching a few YouTube videos about the inception of the 1964 series, I wanted to know more.
As it turns out, none of the characters were originally intended to be a part of the same family. Addams ended up putting them together because they all shared the same dark aesthetic. Once together, they still didn’t have names because single panel cartoons really don’t offer a lot of room for exposition. The characters were named by Addams only after he agreed to allow them to be used in the TV series. He also wrote character descriptions for the show’s producers.
Those character descriptions are included in this very nice book, but very little else here is worth reading. Most of the text consists of descriptions and explanations of the very cartoons we’re looking at in the book. It’s oddly redundant. There’s a little bit of extra info on Addams and the origin of the TV show (Pugsley was originally named Pubert but the network censors wouldn’t allow it)., but there’s not much here that can’t be found on the Wikipedia page for the show.
All in all, this is an overpriced collection that can easily be read in one sitting. Some have suggested this is a complete set of “Addams Family” cartoons, but that’s just not true. It’s well produced but it doesn’t include enough of the Addams cartoons and other supplemental info to warrant the purchase price. I’d suggest trying another Charles Addams book.