My mother and my Aunt Dearborn both subscribed to The New Yorker almost since it was founded in 1925. So did my Godmother, Alice. They were all heavily into the Algonquin Round Table, and always talked about it, but even before I could properly read, I was into the cartoons. Charles Addams & Peter Arno were my favorites. This was back in the mid '50s. Pocket Books released a series of 6 collections of Addams' cartoons in mass market paperback format, and I bought and read and reread those. I still have them.
When the TV series started, I adored that too, even though it made a significant change to the universe of the cartoons. The characters in the cartoons were almost universally malevolent, and there were few signs of any romantic attachment between the characters who the series would name Gomez & Morticia. Yet, that romance was one of the things that made the series so special. Gomez & Morticia were the 1st couple on US TV who looked like they slept together. The entire family loved and accepted each other. They acknowledged and reveled in their differences from the normies, unlike the hapless Munsters who didn't even seem to realize that they were different, but they didn't look down on the normies. I identified a lot with Gomez because he was very outgoing and I took after both of my parents in being very outgoing. We'd be fine going up to any random person and starting a conversation. This has annoyed some of my girlfriends, who accused me (with some justification) of flirting with waitresses.
My mother and my Aunt Dearborn both subscribed to The New Yorker almost since it was founded in 1925. So did my Godmother, Alice. They were all heavily into the Algonquin Round Table, and always talked about it, but even before I could properly read, I was into the cartoons. Charles Addams & Peter Arno were my favorites. This was back in the mid '50s. Pocket Books released a series of 6 collections of Addams' cartoons in mass market paperback format, and I bought and read and reread those. I still have them.
When the TV series started, I adored that too, even though it made a significant change to the universe of the cartoons. The characters in the cartoons were almost universally malevolent, and there were few signs of any romantic attachment between the characters who the series would name Gomez & Morticia. Yet, that romance was one of the things that made the series so special. Gomez & Morticia were the 1st couple on US TV who looked like they slept together. The entire family loved and accepted each other. They acknowledged and reveled in their differences from the normies, unlike the hapless Munsters who didn't even seem to realize that they were different, but they didn't look down on the normies. I identified a lot with Gomez because he was very outgoing and I took after both of my parents in being very outgoing. We'd be fine going up to any random person and starting a conversation. This has annoyed some of my girlfriends, who accused me (with some justification) of flirting with waitresses.