New Yorker cartoons can be roughly divided into two classifications, which, back in the days when I was the most insanely miscast of an almost endless procession of art editors, were conveniently designated as "straight" and "nutty." (p. 5)

[The latter type], rather menacingly displayed in the pages of this book, [Addams and Evil] is harder to define, since it is less a criticism of any local system than a total and melodramatic re-arrangement of all life. Unlike the reportorial artist, whose scenes and personnel are ready-made, the man who draws pictures like those assembled here is obliged to create a nightmare landscape of his own and to people it with men, beasts, and even machines whose appearance and behavior are terribly at variance with the observable universe. He is, generally speaking, successful to the precise extent to which his creations seem peculiar, disturbing, and even outrageous to the...