charles addams the addams family: an evilution...
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POMEGRANATE COMMUNICATIONS, INC. Box 808022 • Petaluma, CA 94975‐8022 Tel: 800‐227‐1428 • Fax: 800‐848‐4372 • www.pomegranate.com • [email protected]
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COMING FROM POMEGRANATE IN MARCH 2010
Charles Addams The Addams Family: An Evilution
H. Kevin Miserocchi
The “evilution” of Charles Addams’s singularly eccentric family began long before the television and film interpretations made them icons of American popular culture. Addams first created Morticia, Lurch, and The Thing in a cartoon published in a 1938 issue of the New Yorker—though he hadn’t named them at the time, or even conceived of a family unit. (When he did name the deadly matriarch, he was inspired by the Yellow Pages listing for “Morticians.”) Other characters were born and developed in a multitude of Addams’s cartoons over the next twenty-six years, before the cheerfully creepy clan debuted on ABC television in 1964 and later on the big screen, twice, in 1991 and 1993. The Addams Family: An Evilution is the first book to trace The Addams Family history in one definitive volume, presenting more than 200 cartoons created by Charles “Chas” Addams (American, 1912–1988) throughout his prolific career, including at least 50 cartoons that have never been published before. Text by H. Kevin Miserocchi, director of the Tee and Charles Addams Foundation, offers a revealing chronology of each character’s evolution (for instance, did you know that Addams originally named Pugsley “Pubert”?), while Addams’s own incisive character descriptions, originally penned for the benefit of the television show producers, introduce each chapter. Published to coincide with the musical The Addams Family: A New Musical, opening on Broadway in 2010 and starring Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth, this book reminds us where these oddly lovable characters came from and, in doing so, offers a lasting tribute to one of America’s greatest humorists.
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POMEGRANATE COMMUNICATIONS, INC. Box 808022 • Petaluma, CA 94975‐8022 Tel: 800‐227‐1428 • Fax: 800‐848‐4372 • www.pomegranate.com • [email protected]
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Sample spread from The Addams Family: An Evilution
Excerpt from the Preface: Charles Addams set out not to create a family but rather to suggest how society as a whole might interpret characters bent on the darker side while living lives similar to those embracing the light . . . Always described as strange, eerie, odd, and spooky, the Family nevertheless had many of the same joys and woes that all families experience—for example, keeping the house in order and seeing that the children take responsibility for the welfare of their pets. How delightfully refreshing that they had a trapdoor and a secret panel for the carpenter to fix, that the children arrived home from camp in pet carriers, and that at least one pet was a small dragon!
—H. Kevin Miserocchi
Charles Addams The Addams Family: An Evilution
H. Kevin Miserocchi $39.95 US ($47.95 Canada) ISBN: 978-0-7649-5388-0
224 pages, 8 x 10 inches Smyth-sewn casebound, with jacket
Catalog No. A180 / Available March 2010 Order information: Please visit our website, www.pomegranate.com, or contact Pomegranate directly at (800) 227-1428 or [email protected].
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