The Addams Family Is Over 75 Years Old. Here's Where They First Appeared

While much of the world was first introduced to the Addams Family via their 1960s TV series, they had actually been around for quite some time before they made their leap to the small screen. As reported in Smithsonian Magazine, their creator was Charles Addams who, despite a pretty typical upbringing with a loving family, always had a love for the darker side of things. But he had a healthy outlet, which was drawing, something he displayed a talent for at a young age; Addams sold his first cartoon to The New Yorker when he was still a student at Grand Central School of Art in New York City.

Smithsonian Magazine states that Addams made quite a career for himself in cartooning, working for publicaitons like Collier's, TV Guide, and of course The New Yorker. It was that latter publication that introduced a certain morbid family to the world across 58 cartoons throughout the 1940s and 1950s. One of the more interesting facts about this early incarnation of the Addams Family was that they were unnamed in comic strip form. However, many classic elements were introduced here: the characters' likenesses, the gallows humor, and the quirky neo-gothic sensibility.

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