The Addams Family

The Addams Family is a group of fictional characters created by American cartoonist Charles Addams. The Addams Family characters have traditionally included Gomez, Morticia, Uncle Fester, Lurch, Grandmama, Wednesday, Pugsley and Thing.

The Addamses are a satirical inversion of the ideal American family: an eccentric wealthy clan who delight in the macabre and are unaware, or do not care, that other people find them bizarre or frightening. They originally appeared as an unrelated group of 150 single-panel cartoons, about half of which were originally published in The New Yorker between their debut in 1938, and Addams's death in 1988. They have since been adapted to other media, including television series (both live and animated), films, video games and a musical.

Premise and background

Addams' original cartoons were one-panel gags. The characters were undeveloped and unnamed until the television series production.

The family appears to be a single surviving branch of the Addams clan. Many other "Addams families" exist all over the world. According to the film version, the family credo is, Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc (pseudo-Latin: "We gladly feast on those who would subdue us."). Charles Addams was first inspired by his hometown of Westfield, New Jersey, an area full of ornate Victorian mansions and archaic graveyards. According to the television series, they live in a gloomy mansion adjacent to a cemetery and a swamp at 0001 Cemetery Lane. In the The Addams Family musical (first shown in Chicago in 2009), the house is located in Central Park.