Cartoonist Warren Kremer passed away in September 2003.
He was the artist who created Richie Rich.
Richie Rich first appeared in Harvey Comics in 1953, reportedly as a companion feature in the Little Dot comics. However, Richie Rich's popularity was evidenced by the number of fans prefering to read Sid Jacobson's story about the "poor little rich kid".
Hence on Tuesday, November 1, 1960, publisher Alfred Harvey launched Richie Rich own comic book. In all, 254 issues were published. The last was published in January 1991.
The popularity of the comics spawned the Saturday morning cartoon series. Produced by Hanna-Barbera, the animation ran from 1980 to 1983. Then there was the live action movie starring Macaulay Culkin in 1994. It was the 38th top grossing film at the box office that year.
Richie Rich was also drawn by cartoonist Ernie Colon.
In an interview in 2007, he recalled, "Harvey Comics were very popular in the 1960s and early 1970s.....I drew a lot of pages for Harvey. I drew somewhere around 15,000 pages for them. My favorite character was Richie Rich.
".....He was an adventurous boy with a lot of money. The early stories emphasized how much money he had — how big his piggybank was, his pool, his house, and so on. I can take credit for steering the character toward adventure stories. My attitude was, 'Let's show what the money can do'....
".....As for the character's vast wealth — yes, well, wealth is usually in the possession of a privileged few. That's nothing new. As it happens, I still retain a healthy store of lefty ideals — if that means I empathize with the poor, the disenfranchised, etc....
"...It was at Harvey Comics that I met Sid Jacobson, one of my oldest and best friends. I also became good friends with Lenny Herman, the writer. But Warren Kremer was my mentor. He was about 10 years older than me, and he was a marvelous cartoonist. I call him the architect of comic books, because he used space better than anyone else. And he was an open book. Whatever he had to offer he wanted to impart it. Warren pretty much designed all the characters for Harvey — even Casper, which the company got from Paramount, didn't have legs until Kremer put them on. He also decided to drop all references to Casper's being a little boy. From that point on he was simply a ghost."
He was the artist who created Richie Rich.
Richie Rich first appeared in Harvey Comics in 1953, reportedly as a companion feature in the Little Dot comics. However, Richie Rich's popularity was evidenced by the number of fans prefering to read Sid Jacobson's story about the "poor little rich kid".
Hence on Tuesday, November 1, 1960, publisher Alfred Harvey launched Richie Rich own comic book. In all, 254 issues were published. The last was published in January 1991.
The popularity of the comics spawned the Saturday morning cartoon series. Produced by Hanna-Barbera, the animation ran from 1980 to 1983. Then there was the live action movie starring Macaulay Culkin in 1994. It was the 38th top grossing film at the box office that year.
Richie Rich was also drawn by cartoonist Ernie Colon.
In an interview in 2007, he recalled, "Harvey Comics were very popular in the 1960s and early 1970s.....I drew a lot of pages for Harvey. I drew somewhere around 15,000 pages for them. My favorite character was Richie Rich.
".....He was an adventurous boy with a lot of money. The early stories emphasized how much money he had — how big his piggybank was, his pool, his house, and so on. I can take credit for steering the character toward adventure stories. My attitude was, 'Let's show what the money can do'....
".....As for the character's vast wealth — yes, well, wealth is usually in the possession of a privileged few. That's nothing new. As it happens, I still retain a healthy store of lefty ideals — if that means I empathize with the poor, the disenfranchised, etc....
"...It was at Harvey Comics that I met Sid Jacobson, one of my oldest and best friends. I also became good friends with Lenny Herman, the writer. But Warren Kremer was my mentor. He was about 10 years older than me, and he was a marvelous cartoonist. I call him the architect of comic books, because he used space better than anyone else. And he was an open book. Whatever he had to offer he wanted to impart it. Warren pretty much designed all the characters for Harvey — even Casper, which the company got from Paramount, didn't have legs until Kremer put them on. He also decided to drop all references to Casper's being a little boy. From that point on he was simply a ghost."
