Vision? Nary!

Richie Rich, poor little Rich Boy

Money is everything. This is the message of Richie Rich comics, which millions of young kids read from 1953 to 1994.

The protagonist and namesake of the comic, Richie, is a young man who wears short pants and a red bow tie. His family is astoundingly rich and his allowance must be toted away to banks and safe-houses in huge bags. He has mansions as play houses on his family’s nearly endless estate. The history of the Rich family is they are upstanding and moral folks who were born into wealth of unknown origin.
They have, in fact, always been wealthy; as can be seen in flashback stories to the stone age where the primordial Rich’s fought off dinosaurs. I have heard told of strict religious families whose members were only allowed comics if they were Richie Rich. Though the Rich family do not appear to be church goers, it seems the Rich world may only be six thousand years old.

The Rich’s, especially young Richie, are seen as very clever. They are a self-made family; If one believes that their clever ancestors, who fought dinosaurs, earned the basis of the family fortune- and the descendants kept hold of it, keeping it out of the clutches of the common rabble who would take it in an instant if only they were clever enough to do so.

There are two common recurring plot-lines in Richie Rich comics. In variation one, thieves try to steal some of the abundant Rich fortune. Richie Rich, through his cleverness, foils them.
In variation two, thieves kidnap Richie in order to ransom him. However, due to the thieves lack of ingenuity, Richie escapes and they are arrested.

Indeed the Rich’s have no worries other than the constant fear of theft and kidnapping.

In Rich world society can be neatly divided among three classes.
Class one, the Rich family.
Class two, the servants who labor for the Rich family, catering to their every whim.
Class three, the common rabble who make up most of the outside world but are rarely seen unless as thieves.

Richie does hang out sometimes with two token poor children- two brothers named Freckles and Pee-Wee, who dress in rags and live in a drafty hovel. Given their circumstances, it does not seem their friendship with Richie is working out for them in a materialistic way. This is the way of Rich world, however. All roads lead to the Rich family. They better the lives of the rabble by spreading chump change at a moments whim… if and when they feel like it. However, loyal poor folk like Freckles and Pee-Wee would defend the Rich’s to the bitter end.

Richie has a cousin, Reggie Van Dough. He is colloquially known as “Mean Cousin Reggie.” This is because he is ill mannered. The nuclear Rich family, in contrast, is very well mannered and polite. They look down on cousin Reginald and his ilk, if not for his lack of class, for his relative lack of cash. The wealthy Van Dough’s are the proverbial poor relations of the Rich clan. This latent hostility may be what makes cousin Reggie “Mean.”

The Rich’s live in a pleasant, idyllic, and well-mannered world. Providing the rabble never rise up en masse.