How the cartoonist behind The Addams Family defused fear, with dead-on humor
Charles Addams' goal was never to create fear, but to defuse it — infusing the horror with a playfulness that appealed even to those who prefer daylight to the witching hour.
On November 3, the Society of Illustrators will induct the cartoonist Charles "Chas" Addams into its Hall of Fame. Although he drew thousands of cartoons throughout his career, Addams is best known for ghoulish and charming characters who first graced the pages of The New Yorker in the late 1930s.
After they appeared on a TV sitcom that ran from 1964-66, The Addams Family, as they came to be known, enjoyed an afterlife in syndication, as well as books, animated series, live-action films, a Broadway musical, , video games, and ads hawking everything from to . Next month, the ever-morse tween
