A man happily leaving a repair shop with a windup key in the back of his head. A window washer outside an office tower window, standing in a gigantic gorilla palm. Addams’ Apple is a new collection of cartoons focusing largely on New York City and its endless possibilities for his delightfully off-kilter juxtapositions.Īddams could take any normal scene in an office, a store, on the street or at home, and add just one element that would change it completely. This is largely due to the Addams Family franchise - tv, film and Broadway musical at very least. Many thanks for the ARC provided by Pomegranate via EdelweissĬharles Addams is the rare cartoonist whose renown has survived him.

For fans of Addams, I never realized before reading this that he accepted an Edgar Award in 1961 for the full body of his work, the first non-novelist to receive this distinction. For me, it was a nice addition, but I really just enjoyed the walk down memory lane, and highly recommend it for those seeking a diversion from the COVID blues.įor those not familiar with Addams cartoons, this is a great way to check out his work. It also includes many that have never before been published. Included among over 150 cartoons, for those fans of The Addams Family, some that feature that famous clan.

His work including a fairly regular dose of somewhat darker, strange cartoons – perhaps influenced by his close friendship with Alfred Hitchcock – the variety wide, but the type where you’d have to look, and then perhaps look again rather than glance at them to understand his style, his humour, and then, of course, laugh. The majority of these are a nod to earlier times, somewhere between the 1930’s and the 1980’s – the years when his work appeared regularly in The New Yorker Magazine.

A wonderful collection of Charles Addams cartoons, some in colour, but the majority are in black & white, which feels, to me, more typical of Addams very tongue-in-cheek, somewhat hidden humour, often political, and in some cases eerily prescient when you consider when these cartoons were created.

The addams family new yorker