Ze-Mastor's Comics Blog

The latest art project was inspired by a totally absurd advertisement in a Richie Rich comic book, Richie Rich Vaults of Mystery #37 (Dec 1980). The ad was completely drawn in the style of regular Richie Rich comics, so it's understandable if kids of that time were confused and mistook it for a normal comics page.

ORIGINAL RICHIE RICH GRIT AD

Richie Rich "GRIT" ad, 1980

Richie asks his father how they got rich. Now, in the comics, the reasons vary. Some indicate that the Riches inherited money from a long line of wealthy ancestors. Some comics say that Mr. Rich was a self-made man. In this ad, Mr. Rich explains that, as a boy, he sold GRIT (the newspaper). It is implied that selling GRIT was the reason he eventually became rich.

Inspired by his father's advice, Richie runs out and spends his time going door to door selling GRIT for 35 cents a copy (1980 money). He whispers that he gets to keep 12 cents for each copy sold as a commission, and tells the reader that they too can earn prizes like bicycles, radios, camping equipment, footballs, etc. His girlfriend Gloria, hair recently bleached blond from the hair dye that she bought with her GRIT earnings, tells the reader that "Girls sell GRIT, too".

Reading this was one of those laugh-out-loud, double-over-in-hysterics moments. Richie, the richest kid in the world with a $25,000 weekly allowance, peddling newspapers for loose change, like he REALLY NEEDED THE MONEY. I thought this was the funniest thing I'd read in comics, eclipsing the gentle humor of the stories themselves.

Former Harvey staffer Paul Maringelli has the following information about GRIT ads in Harvey Comics:

Paul, and some of the staffers laughed about the ad in the office.
Alfred Harvey allowed it because as a young boy he sold GRIT (explaining who exactly the "famous people who got their start selling GRIT" were).
The ad was drawn by Joe Simon (yep, the creator of Captain America) He was a friend of the Harvey brothers.

Thanks to Gee Bee's kind permission, here is an alternate version of the Richie Rich GRIT ad, from April 1981. The conversation between Richie and his father had been altered, removing the implication that GRIT helped Mr. Rich become rich. Also, the specifics about how much an issue of GRIT costs, and how much money a child could make were also changed, no doubt due to the runaway inflation of the late 70's and early 80's. It would make no sense to print the older ad, since the price of magazines (including comics books) were rapidly changing.

Alternate Richie Rich "GRIT" ad, 1981

GRIT AD PARODY

Richie's friends, Freckles and Pee-Wee, live in pretty desperate circumstances. Here's a comic panel of their house- some real "poverty porn". Take a look- Leaky radiator that's dripping water on the floor! No interior walls (therefore no separate rooms), so the beds are a few steps away from the bathroom sink! Cracked plaster galore with plenty of wooden lath visible! A sink that was obviously salvaged from an abandoned warehouse- big enough to bathe in! And (sniff) the boys padding around barefoot on dirty, bare floors. If anybody needed to sell GRIT, it's Freckles and Pee-Wee, not Richie Rich.

Freckles and Pee-Wee's rundown shack

Just by accident, I sorta discovered that I have a bit of a talent for drawing Harvey Comics characters. It didn't take too much study before I was able to draw reasonable facsimiles of them, so I decided to draw a parody of the GRIT ad, using characters who actually needed money.

The final modification was changing GRIT to "GRISTLE". I came up with the idea when I was eating dinner, and saving a piece of gristle for the cat.

"GRISTLE" parody advertisement

I'm not a particularly tight penciller, and all of my inking and coloring is done in Photoshop, but here's the rough pencil sketch:


"GRISTLE" parody advertisement, rough sketch

OTHER HARVEY GRIT ADS

The other GRIT ad that alternated with the Richie Rich one features Casper the Friendly Ghost and Wendy. This one's not quite as ridiculous as the Richie one, because it does not show Casper, Wendy, or any Harvey characters actually going door to door, selling GRIT to the humans. Instead, Casper addresses the reader directly to urge them sell GRIT for various prizes.

Casper and Wendy GRIT ad

Wendy, showing off a bicycle, assures the readers that "this is more fun than a flying broom". What? Bicycle vs. flying broom? Huffing and puffing up hills, and hoping that some idiot in an SUV won't hit you, and having cars whiz by you with only a foot of buffer space vs. flying overhead? I'll take the broom!

Richie Rich joins a 70's radical group! From CRAZY magazine, #69 (1980)

RITCHIE RETCH from CRAZY #69

OMG. This has to be the funniest Richie Rich parody, ever! Published in Marvel's CRAZY magazine, Issue #69 in 1980. I've always loved the artwork of siblings John and Marie Severin, and the art in this story does not disappoint. CRAZY is a B&W magazine, so I did the colors for the parody cover.

Where shall I start? The cover is so chock full of sight gags! I knew immediately what the premise of the story was just by looking at the cover. See, anyone of a certain age who grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area would know the 1974 Patty Hearst kidnapping story very well. For any youngsters reading this, or people who grew up somewhere else or under a rock, go ahead and read Wikipedia for context. But for those of us who already knew the details of the SLA and Patty Hearst story, this Richie Rich parody is such a laff-riot that I couldn't even breathe!

Starting with the series logo in the upper left corner. This "Ritchie" abuses minority workers- cracking a whip over Mexican, Chinese and West Indies peons. The Harvey logo was replaced with "Horrid World". On the main cover splash page, Alt-Ritchie poses with a machine gun in a squalid rat infested hovel, with alt-Freckles and alt-Pee Wee as fellow revolutionaries. It's not quite obvious who the girl is, but it would be hilarious if that was Mayda Munny. One of the rats has his fist raised in a "Fight Da Power" salute. The furniture is wrecked, and the floor is littered with matches, cigarette butts, knives, bombs and sacks of money. Alt-Pee Wee, like any toddler, happily plays on the floor with a ball, which is, in this case... a bomb.

Best thing... the revolutionary logo painted on a bedsheet behind them- almost a dead-ringer for the cobra logo of the Symbionese Liberation Army.

Now, getting to the story. It's titled "Ritchie Retch in Enemy of the Working Class". Alt-Ritchie's minority workers can't stand him, so they watch indifferently while he's kidnapped by left wing radicals alt-Reggie Van Dough, alt-Freckles and alt-Pee Wee. In their run-down terrorist HQ, the kidnappers kick alt-Ritchie into a closet and demand that his father organize a food giveaway for the poor. This is actually a pretty accurate reckoning of the Patty Hearst kidnapping.

Alt-Mr. Rich and his staff reluctantly do a food drop- consisting of high class foods like pheasant, Perrier water, caviar, tea cakes, pastry bags, spice racks, truffles and mints. That had me in stitches, because in real life, such items are sold these days at the high-end farmer's market and shops at the Ferry Bldg in San Francisco.

The Hibernia Bank robbery by alt-Ritchie and his new friends is also eerily accurate. Alt-Mr. Rich orders the radicals' HQ bombed, but there is a slight continuity error where the helicopter pilot says that "Ritchie is not in the mansion". There's no reason why he should be, since he's still with his new BFFs. Alt-Ritchie is outside unloading money from the heist when the bombs drop, completely destroying the building and killing its occupants. This is very reminiscent of how the Patty Hearst kidnappers were killed in a shootout and firefight that burned down their hideout while they were inside.

Alt-Ritchie is picked up by his father, who bribes a judge into sentencing his wayward boy to two weeks at a country-club minimum security prison, where the cells are decorated with modern art, thick shag carpeting, entertainment systems and luxury food and drink stored in spotless stainless steel servers. This reflects many a kitchen table discussion across America about Patty Hearst, who some said was a "poor little rich girl who got off easy".

He is visited by the only survivor of the bombing raid, alt-Freckles, who demands one million dollars, or else he'll kill alt-Ritchie. At the time (1980), one million dollars was still a lot of money. Alt-Mr. Rich arranges for a bodyguard for alt-Ritchie once he's released, and it turns out to be Gloria! Alt-Ritchie proposes marriage and Alt-Gloria gladly accepts, plotting to arrange a fatal accident so she can have all his money. All of this is deliciously ironic, because Patty Hearst wed her bodyguard after being released from prison.

At the wedding party, alt-Freckles dashes out from hiding under the buffet table, and attempts to shoot alt-Ritchie with a machine gun. Alt-Ritchie shoves alt-Gloria into the spray of bullets, killing her instead of himself. Alt-Freckles is dragged off by the police, while alt-Ritchie resumes his hobby of clubbing baby seals to death.

Wow... a lot happened in a 5 page story. Kudos to the writer (Jim Owsley) and the artists (Howard Bender and Marie Severin) for coming up with something this good. Bender and Severin had mastered the Harvey house style, and their depictions of Richie, Mr. Rich, Freckles, Pee Wee, Reggie and Gloria were almost perfect. They purposely went subtly off-model, probably to avoid IP disputes with Harvey Comics.

Satire and parody are so much more effective when based on real-life events, and boy, this story is incredible- taking a real story and raising it to the n'th degree, with suitably hilarious results. It's just kind of a shame that younger adults and kids today would not be able to catch all of the references and appreciate how well done this all is.

I just felt that alt-Reggie and alt-Mayda Munny got the short straws in this story and were criminally underutilized. Mayda, in particular, deserved more than the "helpless girl" look on the parody cover. So I drew Reggie and Mayda in a special pin-up as radicals! With Mayda and the familiar mad-eyebrows and smirk that we all know and hate! Yes, this is my artwork. I wish I could draw like John and Marie Severin, or Don Rosa, or Ernie Colon.

These days, we have Adobe Photoshop to handle the inking and coloring chores, so if we make a mistake, a quick digital eraser removes any errors- forever! My artwork starts off as a pencil sketch on a drawing pad. The sketches don't need to be too tight, because Photoshop inking covers it all up. The background layer is the scanned original sketch. Then, I add a transparent layer for the Photoshop inking. I use a Wacom pen and tablet- I only use a mouse to play video games.

Once the digital inking looks ok, I place an opaque white layer between the pencil sketch and the inks to basically block out the pencils. Then I start adding color transparent layers. Each color has its own layer, and each is set to "multiply" so I can see the layers below them. I don't need to aim the colors too well, since the inked outlines remain intact, no matter how badly I color. Oh, BTW, drawing guns is not my specialty, so the guns were drawn on a separate layer (based on a 4" toy MEGO rifle) and merged into the ink layer once I had it right.

The final layer is a "shadow" layer- a transparent gray. Finally, when everything looks good, I merge all of the layers and save as a .JPG file.

Richie Rich characters sell "GRIT" newspapers, and you can too, kids!