The Addams Family
The Addams Family began as single-panel cartoons in The New Yorker, drawn by Charles Addams from 1938, in which the characters had no names at all — they were named only when the 1964 television series required it. The joke has always been structural rather than macabre: this is a family that is loving, financially secure and entirely comfortable with itself, surrounded by neighbours who are appalled, and the horror is consistently pointed outward at conventional suburbia rather than at them.
About The Addams Family
The Addams Family began as single-panel cartoons in The New Yorker, drawn by Charles Addams from 1938, in which the characters had no names at all — they were named only when the 1964 television series required it. The joke has always been structural rather than macabre: this is a family that is loving, financially secure and entirely comfortable with itself, surrounded by neighbours who are appalled, and the horror is consistently pointed outward at conventional suburbia rather than at them. That inversion has kept the property adaptable across cartoons, a sitcom, animated films and, most recently, a series built around the daughter.
The characters had no names for twenty-six years — they were christened only when the 1964 sitcom needed them.
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Key eras
| Era | Years | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| New Yorker cartoons | 1938–1988 | Single-panel gags with unnamed characters. |
| Television | 1964–1966 | The sitcom that named the family and fixed the look. |
| Film and revival | 1991– | Barry Sonnenfeld's films, then Wednesday (2022). |