It was the Russkies what did it.
Ralph | 09.21.07 - 11:53 pm | #

Personally, I'm just bemused by how freakin' huge Richie Rich is in comparison to the thief. I think the thief is maybe a head taller than the kid, and over all, RR is way more giganticaly proportioned. Especially that noggin. Jeez.

-E
Eric Scott | Email | Homepage | 09.22.07 - 12:30 am | #

Also: Richie Rich is a little kid, right?

He's HUGE. Compare relative skull sizes with that of the "adult" robber.

Creepy.
cobalt | 09.22.07 - 12:35 am | #

Aw. beat me to it.
cobalt | 09.22.07 - 12:35 am | #

Yep, the freakshow proportions to Richie are what attract my attention as well. I think its possible this isn't actually Richie Rich, but is the Superman:TAS Toyman...
LurkerWithout | Email | Homepage | 09.22.07 - 1:51 am | #

I'm pretty sure justifying the use of "coin-ked out" (ho-HO!) is the entire point of this cover.
Mike McGee | Email | 09.22.07 - 3:11 am | #

I think you missed the slight, almost melancholy sense of schadenfreude in Rich's comment...


...and yes, I am full of hot gas. Why do you ask?
Gordon | Email | Homepage | 09.22.07 - 3:12 am | #

Look at the size of that boy's heed. It's like an orange on a toothpick. That's a huge noggin. That's a veritable planetoid.Has it's own weather system. I'm not kidding, that boy's head is like Sputnik; spherical but quite pointy at parts! Now that was offsides, wasn't it? He'll be crying himself to sleep tonight, on his huge pillow.
Phill | Email | Homepage | 09.22.07 - 4:15 am | #

For Trillionaires (?), the Rich's sure have crappy shelves.
Ryogam | Homepage | 09.22.07 - 4:53 am | #

Perhaps Richie head-butted the guy, knocking him to the floor unconscious, and then everything else happened with the shelf, coins, etc.

Of course, the burglar just has a knot on his head, and I would think a Richie Rich head-butt would have completely shattered his skull.
Chaz Ervin | 09.22.07 - 5:24 am | #

I am with Chaz, but I suspect that Richie has delivered a vicious Chris Sims kick to the head, driving the burglar upwards and into the self thus knocking the coins off.
Brett | Email | Homepage | 09.22.07 - 5:29 am | #

I don't know why or how you had the time and the inclination to ponder this, but Im glad you dud.
Johnny B | Email | Homepage | 09.22.07 - 6:04 am | #

I am surprised that they had enough restraint to not make the bump on the robber's head into a cent sign.
rjwhite | Email | Homepage | 09.22.07 - 7:34 am | #

Just want to say, Mr. Sterling, that this was a superlatively entertaining post. You should consider making the mock-scholarly analysis of Harvey covers a weekly feature on the Ruin. I know I'd buy a ticket!
Isaac | Email | Homepage | 09.22.07 - 7:36 am | #

You have too much free time on your hands if you thought of all of this from a Richie Rich cover.
Jim | Email | Homepage | 09.22.07 - 7:57 am | #

That sack of coins is WAY too big for that shelf, particularly when you consider that there is another shelf filled only with stacks of dollar bills above it.

And that's not counting the fact that the broken shelf appears to jut much further out from the wall than the unbroken shelf, to the point where the unbroken shelf appears to be a trompe d'oeil.
Ron Hogan | Email | Homepage | 09.22.07 - 8:56 am | #

I wonder if the robber's appearance is based on that of an editor at Harvey. It screams "real guy" to me.
Derek B. Haas | 09.22.07 - 8:57 am | #

Regarding the burglar's possible exclamation, if we return to your post of August 25, 2007 and issue 109 of "Crime Does Not Pay," we learn that the most likely utterance of any criminal about to be struck on the head by a falling object (be it a large sack of coins inexplicably placed on a bric-a-brac shelf from a discount store or falling human bodies) is "What the dickens?"

How that stack of bills remains on the now-tilting shelf is anyone's guess. Unless they are fake and are actually the trigger that, when grabbed, causes the shelf to split, raining coins of punishment on the head of the greedy intruder.
philip | Homepage | 09.22.07 - 9:22 am | #

Another try out piece for The Comics Journal, eh Mike?
Dorian | Email | Homepage | 09.22.07 - 9:33 am | #

Screw the size of his head, look at those freaking cankles, man! He's built like Krang's android body, but without the brain-with-a-face peeking out his gut.

...so far as we know, anyway.
Jon | Email | Homepage | 09.22.07 - 9:36 am | #

The image is clearly an allegory for Iran-Contra.
Jon H | Email | 09.22.07 - 9:57 am | #

Once again, Richie Rich, the bastard brat of the Bourgeoisie, gloats over the misery of the desperate and downtrodden working class. Will the evil of this spiteful little societal leach ever end?
Blanko | Email | 09.22.07 - 10:16 am | #

Mikester,

You have neglected the most LIKELY (and disturbing) scenario.

To wit:

- Robber breaks into Rich Mansion
(in MY theory, since he neither seems to possess any visible hardware or articles of burgle, NOR does he appear to be of above average intellect - since, if he wereso, he might have thought it SMARTER to NOT wear a black "burgler", and perhaps dress as a house servant to gain better access to the vault locations within the manse --- then as I state, In MY opinion he was LURED therein, by the sadistic big-headed freak-boy, who is so rich that ONLY by playing with the lives of "lower life forms" can he deride ANY enjoyment anymore ).

- Like a RAT in a "humane" trap, once the burgler is INSIDE the vault, the door slams SHUT, trapping him, alive, inside.
(Richie's twisted sense of humor is ALSO evident by the fact that he has apparently GLUED -or some other way AFFIXED- the paper money stacks to their shelves, since they obviously remain in place even though the shelf is now askew, thus making them a "sticky-bait" for the proverbial "rat".)

- Time - and AIR - passes. Thief is in sitting position due to passing out from lack of oxygen (and/or if many days have passed - perhaps enough to cause the more-then-5o'clock shadow present on the (adult) miscreant's jaw, HUNGER could claim him).

-Thief MAY, in his now delusional, oxygen-deprived, brain-chemically altered starving mind... begin to stumble about and crack his skull on the shelf.

- Thief passes out. He also begins to "see" the stars and spheres of the universe beckoning him to the great beyond.


- Just before his life is extinguished completely, RICHIE springs part deux of his trap - opening the door which activates the mechanism which DROPS the sack of coins down thru the shelf and onto the crook's head - so that...

- Richie is ON TIME to deliver his pithy joke, having actively witnessed the coup de'gras.

-Gratified that his perverse sense of control has been sated, Richie gets a chubby.

- The NEXT scene might involve a dumping of a body by a robot, and a swearing to eternal secrecy by a loyal butler.

Of course...that's just my take.

I might be a bit...off.



~P~
P-TOR
SanctumSanctorumComix | Email | 09.22.07 - 11:31 am | #

Oops... I forgot to add in the unfortunate happenstance with the ball-gag and...other...embarrassing elements, shortly BEFORE the body-dump.

Maybe it would have been best I didn't bring it up.

Forget I mentioned it.



~P~
P-TOR
SanctumSanctorumComix | Email | 09.22.07 - 11:39 am | #

Something else to consider is the unlikely physics of the broken shelf as it's shown. It leads one down a line of reasoning that offers an even more usual explanation. If the shelf broke in two--as the cover leads one to assume from the absence of any shelf debris on the floor--how is it that the two pieces are attached to the wall so far apart?

And what of the stacks of bills behind the word ballon? Are they really on an unbroken shelf, as a cursory look at the cover would lead one to assume? If so was is above the broken shelf or behind it? One would presume, judging from the way the improbably stacked bills on the broken shelf hide some of the other bills, that this is a deeper shelf that was behind the broken shelf. But if that is so, then the broken shelf must be hovering in empty space and not attached to the wall at all!

This, as improbable as it sounds, also accounts for the motion "shake" lines being the way they are around the broken shelf (one would otherwise expect the lines to show a "swing" motion as the shelf halves pivot on their nails). Is this a hovering security shelf that flies around dumping giant bags of coins on burglars? Not such a strange idea for a security feature for the Rich family mansion.

Perhaps the easier explaination is that this is just another example of the uninspired cartooning of Ernie Colon (I think I recognize his work from a John K post about a great Harvey comic artist), but every time I see I Richie Rich comic my mind immediately latches onto the most improbable explanations--as I see yours does too from this great post.
steve canadian | Email | 09.22.07 - 12:44 pm | #

Brilliant.
MarkAndrew | Homepage | 09.22.07 - 6:08 pm | #

Bit like breaking a butterfly on a wheel, but funny.
Joe S. Walker | 09.23.07 - 6:26 am | #

'And really, "coin-ked out?" I don't have any explanation for that...that's just stupid.'

Mr. Sterling,

You seem to have forgotten: Richie Rich is wealthy, therefore everything he says is both intelligent and witty. At least when compared to mere plebs like us.

-- SCAM
so-called "Austin Mayor" | Email | Homepage | 09.23.07 - 8:49 am | #

Drunk blogging again, Mike?
Streaker | Email | 09.23.07 - 8:57 am | #

Also, look at the break in that shelf; no real shelf would break that way...
Martin Wisse | Email | Homepage | 09.23.07 - 10:59 am | #

I tried to slog through Mr. Sterling's Richie Rich lecture, but I fumbled halfway through because it got too complicated... so I just went back to the picture and laughed and laughed and laughed. "Coin-ked" ... ha ha ha!!!
Kevin | 09.23.07 - 7:02 pm | #

I really amazing thing about thois cover is that the Rich's apparently have security that is so weak that a burglar (scruffy looking and even wearing a mask so there's no way he be confused with a butler) actually managed to make his way into the safe w/o being noticed and the only rwason he got caught was due to the cheap shelf that the Rich's illegal immigrant laborers made for them. Not that I blame the immigrants for slacking off. If I was hired to do a job for someone who had dollar signs decorating everything they own I would expect a little more than the $5 a day the Rich's were paying. But geez, Riches, get a damn burglar alarm. And take back Richie's "Money Pun a Day" calender. He is clearly abusing it.
Eric L | 09.23.07 - 8:08 pm | #

I'm glad I wasn't the only one weirded out by how freakishly big Richie Rich's head is.
Fred | Email | Homepage | 09.23.07 - 8:39 pm | #

This brings to mind another facet of the early 90s-the Richie Rich glut that Harvey was pushing as the bottom fell out. If I remember correctly, and I might be a year or 2 off, as Marvel was proliferating X-Men and gimmick covers, Harvey had about a dozen or so Richie Rich titles coming every month.
Larry E | Email | 09.24.07 - 5:48 am | #

I swear to Hashut, am I the only comic fan on the Net who likes Richie Rich?
Luke | Email | Homepage | 10.01.07 - 6:32 am | #