The March/April 85th anniversary issue of Weird Tales features our big list of “The 85 Weirdest Storytellers of the Past 85 Years.” We’re breaking it down online, too: one honoree per day, in no particular order, for 85 days!

The TV series based on CHARLES ADDAMS’s (1912–1988) life and odd creations brought weirdness to prime time, well before the term “goth” was but a bloody tear in a suburban teenager’s angst-filled eye. But The Addams Family show was just the most populist tip of the freakish iceberg; thanks to Addams’s 40-year career as a cartoonist for The New Yorker, not even the well-read and well-bred were safe from his dark visions. Legend has it that one of his cartoons was used to gauge lunacy levels in asylum patients.

What’s new: a Broadway musical version of The Addams Family is in the works!