Product Description

Charles Addams was renowned for his depictions of love (or lack thereof) in his cartoons. The passion of Morticia and Gomez Addams, the lonely desires of Fester, the numerous grim and ghastly fights between husband and wife -- all found their way into Addams's signature drawings.

Addams's concept of love was quite a bit different from the traditional idea of romance. Forget roses and chocolate, Addams will show you how to woo a mermaid or celebrate an anniversary on a desert island. Or how to keep your husband on a leash -- literally. Learn what to do when your prince stays a frog, even after you've kissed him.

Compiled from Addams's personal archive, many of these cartoons are previously unpublished gems, while others are Addams classics. The cartoons in Chas Addams Happily Ever After run the gamut from ecstatic love to disappointed affection to murderous obsession and demonstrate that love really does hurt.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #40224 in Books
• Published on: 2006-01-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 176 pages

From The Washington Post
What kind of man would collect medieval armor? Perhaps one who wanted to be insulated from his own creations -- men, women and children often on the verge of dispatching one another. I speak of Charles (Chas) Addams, creator of the Addams Family, longtime cartoonist for the New Yorker, and possessor of an inexhaustibly mordant sense of humor. Among the drawings -- many of them previously unpublished -- collected in Happily Ever After (Simon & Schuster, $20) are such anti-Valentines as a middle-aged man standing near the edge of Echo Gorge, into which a woman's hat and purse are disappearing after their owner. The caption reads, in ever-diminishing letters, "You wouldn't dare ... you wouldn't dare ... you wouldn't dare." Perhaps Echo Gorge goes by more than one name. In another cartoon, a man goes up to a train-station ticket booth and, while his wife stands obliviously by, asks for "a round-trip and a one-way to Ausable Chasm." Not to worry, though. The book includes droves of cartoons in which it's the wife, not the husband, who's involved in spousicide. When it came to marital mayhem, Chas Addams could swing either way. -- Dennis Drabelle
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

About the Author
Chas Addams was the creator of the "Addams Family" cartoons, which first appeared in The New Yorker and were the inspiration for the popular The Addams Family television show and movies. He has been honored with the Yale Humor Award (1954) and a Special Edgar Award for "Cartoonist of the Macabre" from the Mystery Writers of America. Addams died in 1988 in New York City.

Customer Reviews

Chas Addams - without the family
The vast majority of us will know Chas Addams for reasons other than his cartoons published in newspapers and journals such as The New Yorker. You will be disappointed if that's what you are looking for. As previous reviews have stated, some are sketches and some perhaps lose their impact in these times.

But I still found them amusing, certainly exhibiting the dark, morbid humour he was known for. The theme was common enough - marriage, love and the trappings of relationships. Disturbing - not really.

At any rate, I was not disappointed with my purchase but would have liked complete cartoons rather than sketches and perhaps some more in terms of quantity.

Good Addams, bad edition
First, a little information for those disappointed by how few 'Addams Family' cartoons there are. The Charles Addams cartoons came first. The television show was based on a group of characters that he used in more than one of his cartoons. 'Gomez' and 'Morticia' for instance, did generally appear together, or with 'Pugsly' and 'Wednesday'. However, I don't believe the character who became 'Fester' was ever seen with the family. And they were never anything like a main focus of his cartoons.

This edition (for Kindle) is actually a bad idea, and I returned my copy almost immediately after purchasing it. It is impossible, in far too many of the cartoons, too see the subtle details that make Addams cartoons the gloriously horrifying moment outside of time that they truly are. The same problem exists in the paperback editions. To truly enjoy Addams, one should see the full-sized cartoons. Just remember, if an Addams cartoon leaves you scratching your head wondering what's the point, then you've missed the telling detail.

CHAS ADDAMS HAPPILY EVER AFTER by Charles Addams
Chas Addams Happily Ever After is a collection of one-panel cartoons by Addams Family creator Charles Addams. Many were previously published in The New Yorker. Others were previously unpublished - these are mostly sloppy drafts. With the exception of maybe two cartoons, this book does not feature the characters from The Addams Family.

These cartoons are in the classic Addams vein of morbidity, here applied to marriage and the male-female relationship. Taken as a large group like this, they tend to lose much of whatever fizz they might have had. Few are more than just mildly amusing.

On the whole, Happily Ever After is worth flipping through once, but that's about it.