10 Best Richie Rich Visual Gags Of All Time

Published Nov 13, 2026, 12:00 AM EST

An experienced Editor representing Canada via ScreenRant's Team Anime, J.R. has been reading manga since the first printing of Shonen Jump in North America. This passion drove him to write about anime, manga, and manhwa, having recently served as Lead Anime Editor for ComicBook.com.

Richie Rich is one of the most enduringly popular icons to come out of the old Harvey Comics universe, beyond mainly Casper the Friendly Ghost. His affable personality basically projects the average middle-class kid's temperament in the mid-20th century onto the heir to a vast, cartoonish family fortune. He's the inversion of the ultra-privileged scion image people might imagine when thinking of an only child with virtually unlimited resources and the answer to all of life's problems being money. And in the particular era beyond his Little Dot debut, the Richie Rich comic book covers of the original eponymous series from 1960-1991 conveyed these through fun visual gag illustrations.

These covers often told a story within themselves of how Richie would deploy wealth-based solutions to life's troubles with a cheerful smile all along the way. Other covers would feature him enjoying childhood like any other kid, but with vast resources at his disposal to heavily stylize them or just for a comedic display of ostentatious wealth.

Extreme cases, though, can show how silly, impractical, or simply impossible it is to theme everything around money, particularly when it comes to his flair for odd, cash-themed personal vehicles.But Warren Kremer in particular did a wonderful job in rendering a Jetsons-like aspirational image, not of futurism, but of an optimistic, empathetic young boy with an incredible fortune and friends to share it with.

10 Cash Pads

Richie Rich #100, Published December 1970

Part of Richie Rich's charm is in just how he'll try to integrate into regular society while putting his huge cash reserves to use at any turn. In this case, it's turning wads of cash into impromptu padding, even though it'd make far more sense for conventional shoulder pads, let alone just being safer. It's certainly an unusual way to bulk up his shoulders, especially with pads visibly discarded to the right. But how else can Richie's fortune be put to use in an otherwise fair game of football?

9 Toy Boat

Richie Rich #17, Published May 1963

There's something so charming about how Richie, with all the money in the world, is still very much a kid content to play with toys. But in classic Richie Rich fashion, this particular display of wealth is one of the most obnoxious and silly ones ever drawn. Tethered to his massive super yacht in the distance, Richie rides his tiny gilded dinghy so he can then string his tiny toy sailboat along. After all, kids like Richie get bored of staying in any place long enough, even if it's a comically massive boat that'd make Jeff Bezos jealous.

8 Surfing Currency

Richie Rich #60, Published August 1967

This particular visual gag is the type that starts simply by showing the unnecessary added features of Richie's surfboard, down to a rear view mirror, and gets more absurd the more one thinks about it. With a steering wheel, a motor, and presumably a rudder, this surfboard suddenly becomes more of a boat with absolutely no guardrails, safety being sacrificed on the altar of status. But it's okay, he's got his golden luxury features, and even a bench seat for if he wants to relax while catching the next big wave.

7 Banknote

Richie Rich #18, Published July 1963

There's something to be said about just how many hobbies Richie Rich picks up, but there's another matter entirely for the ability to create entirely new sound. With a dollar sign joining otherwise typical notes on a musical staff, Richie appears to have found a new key only he can play in. But a golden violin also presents other hilarious problems: Richie would hardly settle for gold-plated half measures, so it'd be much heavier, and acoustically terrible. But if one were to safely gamble on what that mysterious note would sound like, it'd likely be "cha-ching!"

6 Golden Geese

Richie Rich #12, Published September 1962

One of the most adorable early Richie Rich visual gags, this renders the classic idiom about the goose that lays the golden egg present in all sorts of pop culture media. The gag turns even that goose into a plurality, laying countless eggs to create a sort of one-percenter easter egg hunt. The gag is perfectly simple while having fun with Richie Rich's particular quirk, without resorting to elaborate gadgets or even a kid's projected image of wealth. It's just a kid frolicking and having fun, at no added expense and farming immense profit.

5 Campfire

Richie Rich #54, Published February 1967

Much like gathering eggs or playing with toy boats, Richie Rich as a comic always adds a twist to how its star addresses completely mundane situations. This cover's not even the first one rendering a camp or even a campfire scene, but it's also a far humbler scene, until readers quickly zero in on the fact that Richie is using a precious gem ring the size of a jawbreaker as a magnifying glass to light his fire. It's perfectly silly, but also far from the most over-the-top solution he could deploy in such a situation, and frankly not bad problem-solving, provided the ruby boulder on his hand functions enough like a lens to make it possible.

4 Stuck The Landing

Richie Rich #172, Published November 1978

Money is said not to be the solution to all of life's problems, but to Richie Rich, it comes awfully close, especially if one has enough of it on hand. In the case of a badly damaged landing gear wheel of his private jet, Richie patches the gaping gash with haphazardly-placed dollar bills, functioning both as a tire plug and apparently as a chock.

The pilot seems to trust this plug will hold, but the repair truck better be the one to reap the cash reward for a job well done in the end. Richie's a good kid for pitching in, though, both by paying upfront and helping with the labor. It's a solid example of his "Noblesse Oblige" traits, or tendencies to dutifully use his resources to help those around him, even if it hardly seems like a solution that'd ever truly work.

3 Trimming The Dollar Tree

Richie Rich #42, Published February 1966

With the Rich family, their vast wealth means even simple Christmas celebrations involve massive displays of wealth, in this case being a towering behemoth of a Christmas tree. In fact, it's so tall that Richie Rich himself flies his gilded personal helicopter so he can carefully hang ornaments around its highest points. One has to wonder what is more of a pain, dressing the tree, or tearing it all down once the holidays are over.

2 Cash Car

Richie Rich #59, Published July 1967

There's nothing inherently wrong with Richie Rich keeping a consistent style in mind, but this visual gag is particularly funny for anybody who's ever participated in the wood car racing hobby, and wanted to carve an elaborate design. Beyond the question of how good the steering would be (and Richie's lack of a helmet, which is aside the point) it's just funny seeing the absolute aerodynamic nightmare that is this dollar sign design, and how he'd likely be trailing far behind the other racers in any other case.

But with Richie Rich comics, a healthy suspension of disbelief and a sense of humor can go a long way, even if this car doesn't seem to have a suspension, and really can't go a long way.

1 La$$o

Richie Rich #28, Published December 1964

One of the most innocent examples of Richie Rich just being an ordinary, this image of him playing cowboy still shows he can't help but show how much he's all about the money. The dollar sign he manages to form while twirling the rope in the air is impressive, but whether the illustration was faulty or, hopefully intentional, it looks more like it's an absolutely lousy lasso. In fact, it looks just like no loop was formed at all, but with a knot in the middle, meaning Richie Rich looks less like a cowboy and more like a juvenile Le Chiffre hitting the dude ranch.

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