My Crowd [Hardcover]

Charles addams (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 30, 1970

My Crowd is back by popular demand, just in time for the 20th aniversary of its first publication. With the most popular cartoons from his first six books, this cadaverous collection contains a wonderful assortment of goblins, ghosts, and gremlins, along with Addams' own famous "family" of characters that have made his name a household word.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; First Edition edition (September 30, 1970)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671207881
• ISBN-13: 978-0671207885
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,835,040 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Addams Family source better than any of its successors., June 2, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: My Crowd (Paperback)

Part of the beauty of the original "Addams Family" tv show, and an aspect of the show that has been almost totally lost throughout the first average animated series, the two okay movies, and the most recent abysmal animated series, was that the Addamses themselves did not exist in a vacuum; surrounding them, throughout their town and the world, was a network of individuals, shops, and organizations that shared the same "bizarre" tastes that they did. The Addamses were never non-conformists as such; they honestly thought that most of the world was just like them. This "Addamsian" subculture was, admittedly, quite understated in the tv show, but Charles Addams's original comics portrayed it clearly and delightfully. It's a world of three-armed people, casual magic, ingenious children, multi-species interaction, and, almost always, a sense of the macabre which recognizes itself as nothing but part of the norm. In addition to the Addams Family characters themselves (never actually named in the comics; they were "the Addams family" in the same way that the characters in "Doonesbury" would be called "the Trudeau troupe"), there were other occasional recurring characters, providing a sense of continuity that emphasized Mr. Addams's ongoing theme: everyone and everything is weird, to someone else, somewhere. The only flaw in this book is one that it may not have been originally intended to address (the book was first published years ago, only reissued recently in conjunction with the movie): it's not a complete collection of all the comics featuring the proto-Addamses themselves. Still, the comics of Charles Addams rarely fail to entertain and provoke. Gary Larson and his legion of imitators have never really reached the heights that Charles Addams by and large maintained until his death.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Poor Quality Book, August 20, 2007

By 

KLW "***" (SE USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Crowd (Hardcover)

I love Charles Addams. In fact, I own five collections of his work. This one is by far the worst. It is printed on paper resembling newsprint and the print quality is low. There isn't enough contrast - areas that should be black are grey and the images look washed out and muddy. You can tell by the completely inappropriate colorization of the characters in bright colors on the front cover that something is wrong with this book. On the back, there is an ad for the Addams Family movie. It's obvious that this book is an exercise in cheap profiteering somehow correlated with the release of the movie. Do yourself a favor and see these cartoons in their full glory with good contrast printing on nice paper. Try getting "The World of Charles Addams" c.1991 used. It's a real, quality art book and well worth a few extra dollars.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Suddenly, I have a dreadful urge to be merry.", August 24, 2004

By 

mwreview "mwreview" (Northern California, USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: My Crowd (Hardcover)

My Crowd is a collection of some 200 cartoons (most of which are full page) by the comically macabre illustrator Charles Addams. About half of these cartoons focus on the ghoulish family who enjoys the things in life many find to be hideous (like lovely poisonous plants and Ebenezer Scrooge "bless his heart"). This family, who was introduced by Addams in the New Yorker in 1932, spawned the T.V. show named after the artist. The cartoons featuring this family are some of the best ones in this books; from the bratty son hanging up "Bridge Out" and "Blasting Ahead" signs he stole for his bedroom to the proud parents reading a letter from the school about their son's "perverse, crafty, and wanton" behavior, to poor "Lurch" being admonished for not picking up an eye of newt at the grocery store. The father is more freaky than the amorous Gomez of the T.V. show. The drawings of the mother (Morticia in the series, the characters were not given names in the cartoon) are the best. Her body language and expressions are great, even if she is just standing with her arms crossed. Other reoccurring characters, like the handyman who's asked to fix a squeak on a trap door and puts in a window so the family has a delightful view of the cemetery lends the family series even more continuity.

The other cartoons are also often ghoulish but also very witty. Some have no text like the drawing of two unicorns watching in the rain as an arc sails away or an actress screaming directly to the camera on the movie screen while everyone in the audience turns around to see what she's screaming at. Then there is the couple driving past a sign that says "Children At Play" and, ahead of them, you see children ready to push a giant boulder into their path. Another one of my favorites are the prince and princess telling the Medieval marriage counselor they are not "living happily ever after." The cartoons were taken from six books by Charles Addams so, it is probably meant to whet one's appetite around the time of the last Addam's Family movie rather than to be an exhaustive chronicle of Addams' work. If you like dark humor (i.e. Edward Gorey) this book is for you.