Richie Rich Isn’t an Asshole

Richie Rich Isn’t an Asshole
There were a few fun details that didn’t make it into the final version of this essay I wrote for Mother Jones, titled: “Why Is Everybody Hating on Richie Rich?” One has to do with who created Richie, a beloved comic-book character who first appeared in September 1953, in a side story for a book featuring a different character, “Little Dot.”

Unlike many publishing houses, Harvey Comics realized that if you wanted girls to buy comics, too, you actually had to feature some female characters! Smart, right? Harvey also published Little Audrey and Little Lotta books, though Lotta wasn’t little at all. As her name implies, she was rather fat—the gags often involved her ravenous appetite—yet also tremendously strong, like an overweight Pippi Longstocking. Bullies and bad guys had no chance against Lotta. You could never publish something like that nowadays, or Pippi for that matter, as those books had some, well, outdated aspects. Babar, too! Some weird colonialist shit going on there.

In any case, Richie got his first solo book in 1960 and grew wildly popular—Harvey’s best-selling title by far, basically minting money for the publisher. His 1960s and 1970s heyday stretched into the 1980s, with the unveiling of a Richie Rich Saturday morning cartoon series on ABC. Richie is 9 or 10 years old in the comics but a teen in the TV cartoons. I never watched that 1994 Macaulay Culkin movie, but it looks pretty dumb and not very true to the comics—aren’t the books always better?

As to who created Richie, that’s kind of a sore spot. I talked to a bunch of people about it, including Jonny Harvey, the grandson of one of the three Harvey brothers, who is working on a Harvey Comics documentary. I also quizzed media historians Jerry Beck and Mark Albert, former Harvey artist/writer Angelo DeCesare—who drew Richie for a couple of years—and Seth Jacobson, whose late father, Sid Jacobson, was Harvey Comics’ long-time editor.

Sid—I believe it was at some point after the Harvey brothers passed, and when the company was being sold—claimed he was Richie’s creator, which led to hard feelings. Founder Alfred Harvey’s children insist Richie was Alfred’s idea, and that may well be the case. Realistically, Richie was probably a group effort, because whomever provided the spark, Harvey artists Steve Muffatti and Warren Kremer and editor Jacobson would have been instrumental in developing the character into what he became.

There was no disagreement about Richie’s moral compass, however. Harvey’s founders, artists, and writers were largely first- or second-generation Jewish immigrants whose goal was to sell comics by making up stories young kids would love and imparting good values (embodied by Richie) along the way.

And not just kids! Tony Isabella, who ran a Cleveland comic book store from 1978 through 1989, started noticing that his most enthusiastic Richie Rich customers were middle-aged Black women.

“They could not get enough of him,” Isabella recalls in a foreword for Mark Arnold’s book The Best of the Harveyville Fun Times! Isabella wasn’t surprised, he told me, but he was curious, so he began asking the women what they liked about Richie. “They absolutely got and relished the humor of the absurd displays of wealth,” Isabella writes. They enjoyed the escapist aspect, too, but “more importantly, they loved that all the money meant little to Richie. What was important to Richie were the same things that were important to them: family and friends…They saw themselves in Richie.”

And there you have it. Richie Rich was a good egg. If you need a superrich comic book character to compare with Donald Trump or Elon Musk, try Reginald Van Dough (Richie’s greedy, scheming cousin) or the snooty social climber Mayda Munny—or perhaps Scrooge McDuck! He’s about the same age as Trump, if I’ve got my duck years right.