POOR LITTLE RICH BOY

An icon of benevolent wealth has fallen upon hard times. What does that say about America?

- BY MICHAEL MECHANIC

FOR KIDS LIKE me, who grew up in the 1960s and '70s, comics were a big deal. Our media landscape otherwise consisted mainly of books and records, commercial radio, and, in my family's case, a small black-and-white TV that got four staticky channels. So we periodically raided our piggy banks and headed to the Stop-N-Go for candy and comics. My favorite was Richie Rich.

Richie was wildly popular, a brave and generous little fellow with unfathomably wealthy parents. He's 9 or 10 years old in the comics, with a signature outfit consisting of white booties, blue shorts, a black jacket, and a white shirt with a big red bowtie. (He's a teenager, with outfits less Little Lord Fauntleroy, in the 1980s cartoon series—ditto the 1994 Macaulay Culkin movie.)

Had someone compared you to Richie back in the day, you might have thanked them. After all, he used his vast wealth for good. But Richie's reputation has fallen upon hard times. "We all knew Trump was richie rich scumbag," one Bluesky user wrote in March. Another posted, of the Virginia governor and Trump sycophant Glenn Youngkin: "'Richie Rich' Youngkin (R), thinks poor people should just fucking stay poor." A third circulated a parody comic book cover, "Richie Reich," featuring a dour Musk/Richie hybrid doing the Nazi salute. It got more than 1,100 likes.

"Richie is so misunderstood," laments 30-year-old news producer Jonny Harvey, whose late grandfather, Leon, along with brothers Alfred and Robert, churned out hundreds of issues of Richie Rich on their family-friendly Harvey Comics imprint from 1960 through 1982—with an encore from 1986 to 1989, when the company was sold—in addition to titles like