Customer Reviews

My Crowd

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

The argument can be made that Charles Addams is the father of American "sick" humor, starting when "The New Yorker" publishes his first cartoon in 1935. Of the 189 drawings in this 20th anniversary reprinting of "My Crowd," a collection of the best cartoons from the first six Addams books, 185 originally appeared in "The New York" between 1937 and 1969. Of those 50 are of the Addams family, and if all you know is the classical television series or the pair of theatrical films, then you owe yourself a chance to see the inspired original. My father had a collection of cartoons from "The New York," which had several choice efforts of Addams' work, all of which seem to be included here. But even in my pre-teen years it was clear that Chas. Addams was something special. One of my favorites was of a patent attorney pointing a strange weapon out his window and telling the applicant: "Death ray, fiddlesticks! Why it doesn't even slow them up."

But so many of the classic Addams cartoons do not even involve captions, leaving it to the viewer to figure out "what is wrong with this picture" (e.g., a baby carriage with bars on it, the list of ingredients on the side of the Witch's gingerbread house in Hansel and Gretel, and Uncle Fester sharpening the points on the top of the iron fence). The world of Chas. Addams is just slightly a skewed, but in a ghoulish and macabre way. The only complaint would be that seeing the Addams family colored in on the cover seems so wrong (I prefer to think of them as all have pale and pasty complexions). But that is not going to be enough to stop you from tracking down "Drawn and Quartered," "Creature Comforts," "The Dear Dead Days," and the rest of the collections of the cartoons of Charles Adams.

I wanted to give my husband a Xmas present of Addams work - he wasn't familiar with the cartoonist. This book was a perfect example of his darkly fun cartoons.

There is a good mix of the strange and absurd in this book, as well as Addams family - about 50-50. Many pages depict wintery themes with an evil sense of the macabre lurking in the background... A total of 192 pages of wyrd. It gets you thinking about how the indomitable potential of the human spirit. (Spooky!)

This is the kind of book to read when you're having a tough time with people, the weather is bad, or you're in the hospital feeling fatal. Why not give it as a gift? These cartoons have a creative, strange, psychological tweak that will keep you coming back for a laugh.

I thaught that this was one of the best comic books I've ever read. Half the comics don't have dialouge, yet the pictures are absoloutly wonderful.Being only ten myself, I don't understand a few of the comics, but it's fun to figure them out. One of my favorites is when Gomez is telling his children a bedtime story about " dear old Scrooge, bless his heart." I have always been addicted to the Addams family, but even if you've never heard of Charles Addams, you're sure to lap this book right up and beg for more.

Addams is the cartoonist with the twisted sense of the macabre whose characters were the impetus for the excellent television comedy "The Addams Family." They are a group of people modeled after the icons of the horror genre. The parents are Count Dracula types and their house is broken down in the classic haunted house sense.
This book contains some of best efforts ever and they are funny. His twisted sense of humor extends beyond the Addams family to many other absurd situations. Two men are stranded on a desert island in the ocean and it looks like the continental United States. A man in a suit and top hat is walking by a nursery school and a schoolmarm type is sitting in a tower holding a Tommy gun. She has a stern expression and is facing inward towards the children. A man is in a dilapidated boarding house and has his head in the gas oven. A shrewish looking woman is telling him that he doesn't have kitchen privileges.
I smiled my way all through this book, no one makes the macabre more funny than Charles Addams and this book is 192 pages of his best efforts.

The title of this collection of the Master of Macabre's cartoons is fitting. I do have feel like one of the relatives and resemble some of the characters. As the tag line from the movie read: Weird is Relative.

It is wonderful to get the collections of Mr Addams' cartoons in hardcover as many of the original paperbacks are out of print and not in the best of condition. If one is a collector, I highly recommend getting all the hardcover books out there.

Even if some of the cartoons are repeated, they are good enough to enjoy over and over again.