#United Feature Syndicate

[oh-bother-stickers]

[driveintheaterofthemind]

Original Art - Tarzan Sunday Comic Strip (Apr15th1945)

Art by Burne Hogarth

United Feature Syndicate

[acmeoop]

KLONK! “Garfield 3-4-79” (1979)

[chernobog13]

SPARKLER COMICS (vol. 2) #1 (July, 1941). Cover (probably) by Reg Greenwood, co-creator of Spark Man.

This issue marked the first appearance of Spark Man (later Sparkman), an original superhero inserted inside a comic book filled with newspaper comic strip reprints.

As he was brand new to readers, Spark Man decided that he should explain his powers to the readers before his main story began:

All I have to say is this guy had to be real careful before rubbing his eyes or scratching his nose, or he was probably gonna blow his face off.

[funnypages]

"You wanna know how to get Capone? They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way!"

-Nancy

[browsethestacks]

Vintage Comic - Tip Topper Comics #025

Pencils: Ernie Bushmiller

Inks: Ernie Bushmiller

United Feature Syndicate (Oct-Nov1953)

[scifi4wifi]

Charles M. Schulz Would Have Been 102 Today

If you’ve never heard of Charles M. Schulz, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of a little comic strip he created back in the early Fifties, that over the decades since has morphed into several television specials and feature animated films, and changed the world. Of course we’re talking about the Peanuts gang. Their creator was born on November 26, 1922, and he would have been 102 today. When…

[teresabeadle5]

S is for Snoopy Skiing in Snow by linda_lou2 Via Flickr: This is an “extra” one for the letter S. I just happened to take this today, and it’s the letter S day, so I had to! Serendipity! February Alphabet Fun Month 2021

[mewnette]

Tiny Dinos Pin Back Button 1987

[thehauntedrocket]

[oh-bother-stickers]

[onlylonelylatino]

Tarzan by Hal Foster

[driveintheaterofthemind]

Original Art - Peanuts Sunday Comic Strip (Feb21st1954)

Art by Charles Schulz

United Feature Syndicate

[acmeoop]

Some Sort Of Joke “U.S. Acres” (1988)

[acmeoop]

Well, I Hope You’re Happy

Original sketch and final art by Jim Davis from a Garfield Sunday strip, published by  United Feature Syndicate, July 18, 1982.

[allergictocolor]

The Addams Family Through the Years

Before I get into character profiles, let me first do a run-through of the incarnations of the Addams family through the years.

As I wrote in my first post, Charles Addams created the nameless, bizarre family in some of the many comics he drew for The New Yorker starting in 1938. Morticia and Wednesday were named in 1962 when dolls of them were released. Charles Addams was asked for a list of names and descriptions for them and the other family members when the TV show was in development in 1963, but had little other involvement with the show.

The show ran for two seasons from 1964 to 1966, totalling 64 episodes. This was the same time that a similar show, The Munsters, was also on the air. Both shows were about wacky families of monstrous weirdos living in American suburbia. Both were in black and white, and both were canceled in 1966, possibly due to the rise of color television.

After a cross-over with Scooby-Doo, Hanna-Barbera produced a 16-episode animated series in 1973 which featured the family on a road trip in a creepy camper that looked like their mansion. It featured the same actors who played Lurch and Fester voicing their previous characters, and a 10-year-old Jodie Foster as the voice of Pugsley!

There was a reunion special in 1977, which reunited most of the cast of the show, called Halloween with the New Addams Family. The original show had remained popular, running in syndication for years. It was especially popular in Australia. According to one fan, this was because the Addams family was “less American” than the Munsters. 

In 1991, a feature film was released after a tumultuous production. Raul Julia became the new face of Gomez Addams in the popular consciousness. It was followed by a sequel called Addams Family Values in 1993, and in between there was another animated series. John Astin reprised his role as Gomez in that animated series. 

There were plans to continue the film series, but Raul Julia suffered from stomach cancer and died suddenly in 1994, canceling those plans. Although both films performed poorly at the box office, they gained a loyal following on home video and remain popular to this day. In 1992, an Addams family pinball machine was produced featuring original voice acting from Raul Julia as Gomez and Angelica Huston as Morticia. It became the most popular pinball machine of all time, selling over 20,000 units.

In 1998, a TV movie called Addams Family Reunion was produced by Saban, featuring Tim Curry as Gomez and Daryl Hannah as Morticia. The only returning actors from the 1991/93 movies were Carel Struycken and Christopher Hart's hand, who played Lurch and Thing, respectively. I have not seen it, and can not attest to its quality, or lack thereof. That movie was also meant to be the pilot for a TV show called The New Addams Family, but most of the cast was different. It ran for 65 episodes, none of which have I seen. (Hat tip to @tenthirtyone for pointing this out.)

After a try-out in Chicago, a musical debuted on Broadway in 2010. I was lucky enough to see that for my birthday that year. It starred Nathan Lane as Gomez and Bebe Neuwirth as Morticia. It was pretty entertaining. It would have been better if Lane wasn’t trying to be Raul Julia. He did a very fake Spanish accent, and it was terribly distracting. The musical was panned by critics and didn’t last long, but it was popular enough that it is now performed by high schools across the country. In fact, my friend Sarah and my cousin Charlie were both involved with different productions of it this past Spring.

That same year (2010), the rights were purchased by Illumination Entertainment, and they announced that they were going to produce a stop-motion film with Tim Burton. However, he decided to go with computer animation instead. That eventually turned into the 2019 film, after Tim Burton dropped out. This version was the closest in appearance to the original comics. Although the characters are rendered in 3D, the animators aimed to make them look as much like Charles Addams’ drawings as possible.

You’d think Tim Burton had been involved since at least the 1991 movie, but he hadn’t. Black and white stripes? Bats? Other goth things? That sounds like Tim Burton, but oddly enough, he actually hasn’t been attached to any Addams Family property until the Netflix show in 2022. It’s a natural pairing, and perhaps he would have been great friends with Charles Addams, had he been born several decades earlier. 

Now the Netflix show, centered on Wednesday, is in production for its second season after its first season was one of the streaming service's most popular shows to date. It's not the first time the Addams family has spawned a viral dance sensation. Way back in the 1960s, the original TV show started a dance craze called “the Lurch”.

In coming posts, I’ll go into how Charles Addams originally portrayed each of the nine characters in the Addams family pictured above (Gomez, Morticia, Pugsley, Wednesday, Fester, Grandmama, Lurch, Thing, and Cousin Itt) and how they evolved, or didn’t, over time.