"SHIVER with FEAR…SHAKE with LAUGHTER."

§ November 23rd, 2009 § Filed under harvey, richie rich Comments Off on "SHIVER with FEAR…SHAKE with LAUGHTER."

In the comments for yesterday’s post, both Tim and John comment on the “intense” adventure-oriented nature of the Richie Rich comic I presented. I’ve always thought this kind of Richie Rich comic, as common as it was, seemed a bit…peculiar, myself, contrasting the exceedingly cartoony nature of Richie with drama, action, and intrigue. Archie did it, too on occasion. I suppose ultimately it’s no more ridiculous than, say, Uncle Scrooge McDuck going on world-spanning and sometimes life-threatening adventures (though there are, I imagine, several reasons why Scrooge’s adventures feel less out of character than they do for Richie or Archie…perhaps a topic for another day).

I’ve presented these panels before, about five years ago, but this remains my favorite cognitively dissonant bit from one of the “adventure” Richie Rich comics…in this case Richie Rich Diamonds #56, where Richie is stranded in a foreign country and faces off against…um, the Vietcong, maybe?


Here’s another Harvey book I came across with a similarly out-of-character presentation:


Okay, not so much in the cover image but in the promises made in the blurbs: “shiver with fear..shake with laughter.” C’mon, it’s Casper…how much shivering in fear are we seriously expecting, here? (And the “shake with laughter” part…well, your mileage will vary, I guess.)


That’s about as scary as it gets. But it’s not as if we were realistically expecting “OH MY GOD! It’s Baby Huey…but where’s his head!? AAAAIIIIEEEE!!!” I’d totally read that, of course, but alas, our actual Harvey scares are more gentle and friendly in nature.

Comments are closed.