EXTRACTS: Illustrators issue 29 © 2019 The Book Palace (96 PAGES in Full edition)

3 Charles Addams The master of dark humour whose legend far outlived the cartoonist. Now thanks to our editor of mischiefs, Diego Cordoba, relive the saga of the creator of a series of ghoulish characters that became America’s fondest kooky family. Fewartists can lay claim to having created a legend around them to almost mythical proportions. Such an artist was cartoonist Charles Addams whose disturbing but outrageously funny cartoons featuring, among others, a family of ghoulish misfits known as the Addams Family , captured the attention and minds of millions of Americans and other fans around the world for many decades. Rumours that Addams himself slept in a coffin, and drank martinis with eyeballs in them, persisted during his lifetime and afterwards, along with him keeping a guillotine in his house and receiving chopped-off fingers in the mail from his fans. Certain connoisseurs claimed he had drawn a cartoon with a ghoul in a maternity room telling the nurse, FACING PAGE: Cupid Cleaning Window , watercolour. Cover illustration for The New Yorker , April 1960. ABOVE: Still of Addams from an article in LIFE , 1946. BELOW: Downhill Skier , ink and wash on paper, 1940. The most copied gag idea ever, and which got Addams a full-time job at The New Yorker . Photo © LIFE