Customer Reviews

The World of Chas Addams

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Having spent a lifetime collecting all of the older rare cartoon books by Charles Addams, this book makes a wonderful addition to my collection. It includes several hard to find (if not down right impossible to find) prints, including over a dozen in full color. The text is a well written bonus, with the history behind the man written in an easy to read and uncomplicated style, so often missing in books of this sort. The information given, matches quite closely with the interveiws given by Charles Addams during his life and is a good reference book for dedicated "Addams Family" fans both old and new. It is nice to know that the older cartoons are not lost but live again in this excellent book. Available in both hard-bound and paper-back format.

Close your eyes and try to imagine what the person who came up with the Addams Family looks like. Then look at the back cover of this book and see the kindly, twinkly-eyed person who's looking back at you and wonder which part of his brain went a little bit (but wonderfully) haywire to come up with such delights as the Addams Family standing on the roof to pour hot oil over Christmas carollers below (one of the most famous Charles Addams cartoons, and with good reason). Each and every one of the several hundred cartoons in this collection is a gem, even if you have to look hard for the punch line in some of them (and if some of them are there just for the beauty of the thing), and anyone who has kept up with cartoons in the New Yorker or anywhere else will find lots of panels that will bring back a memory or two. This collection is a priceless tribute to one of the true greats of the cartooning world.

This collection of cartoons-which includes several of the original Addams family, in all its ghoulish glory-is perfect reading for the evening, or just before going to sleep. I'll never forget the one in which Gomez's predecessor (unnamed in the cartoons) gazes out the window at a violent storm and exclaims, "Just the kind of day that makes you feel good to be alive!"

If you are a fan of black humor, then these cartoons are for you. This book contains many of his "Addams Family" cartoons, but there is MUCH more in there as well. A collection of classic cartoons that will have you rolling read after read!

If you're even a remotely Addams family or cartoon fan, you wouldn't have to read these reviews. Just buy it!

Whenever I waited in a doctor's office during the span of Charles Addams' career, I hoped one of his cartoons would be in the New Yorker magazine I would pick up. They incorporated humor into the creepy, the spooky, the macabre, and the just plain evil in the wittiest of ways: Addams matched the sophistication of the other cartoonists, but he was distinctive because of his dark humor.

Some of the cartoons had victimless creepy humor, like the ones suggesting the existence of mice with human organization skills. But we humans, for better or worse, can be led to laugh at evil toward victims prior to the disastrous consequences, as with Addams cartoons (unfortunately, some can laugh after the consequences too). Addams' perhaps most famous cartoon had the creepy Addams family on the roof of their haunted house getting set to pour boiling oil onto Christmas carolers at their doorstep. But the cartoon that most epitomized what Addams' humor was all about had Uncle Fester displaying a wicked smile while staring at a movie screen unseen by the reader, even though all the other attendees were crying. Because readers laugh, they are agreeing with Uncle Fester rather than the viewers, just as Addams readers see humor in bland-faced husbands and wives that imagine killing each other. Keep things simple, without graphic details and explanations, and it is funny.

Addams had skill as an artist, as a master of dark shadings and a punctilious drawer of details. His sketchings of humans tended to be plain, but the creepiness of the Addams Family was ingenious. The Hardcover Edition is also worth checking out for the introduction by Wilfred Sheed. Ironically, Sheed writes "Charlie's ghost ... should ... be spared the clumsy gropings of psychobiography" even as he sheds much light on the dark cartoonist, with respect to his childhood and other things.

AAAHHHHHH. Now this is an art book. Experience the dark and clever world of Charles Addams in this once-in-a-lifetime treasury of high-quality images. Finally, a masterful collection of his work. Addams' widow, Tee, should be proud of this book, which she assembled, in tribute to good ol' Charlie. God rest his soul.

I'd long wondered if there was a career-spanning retrospective of Charles Addams' work. I had been a fan since I was a young boy purchasing a copy of Black Maria in paperback at the age of eleven in the 1960s. When I found The World of Charles Addams here at Amazon, even though it was a used copy, I knew I had to have it. What a treat it has been to see Addams' early work again! The only thing better would be for his publisher to compile a complete collection of everything Addams ever put on paper, much like the complete collection of Gary Larson's Far Side cartoons a number of years back. As it is, this is a wonderful collection of Addams' work and now a treasured part of my library.

After recently seeing a small exhibit of Charles Addams's drawings, I felt I wanted to have a nice collection of his work. This book fits the bill.

I'm a big lover of the Addams Family... Still I'm not sure if Addams did any books just focused on the beloved, creepy family, or if all his books are a hodge-podge. I'm collecting a few of them here and there, giving my reviews when possible. I've also been back and forth to the library... I would have to say this book might be the one which offers the most comprehensive collection on Addams' work, including Addams Family. It's a big, fat book!

And this is just a fun book to own, especially if you like to laugh or are an artist. You will get countless hours of entertainment in the cartoons here, which are really quite simple depictions of the macabre. Somehow, I imagine this book as being the one I'd take to the hospital for an overnight stay. (You could appreciate it even more on an IV drip...)