I know it’s hard to believe, but Richie Rich was a cool dude once.

Once upon a time the character, originally created by Harvey Comics in 1952 as a companion feature in Little Dot, actually had a personality, clever stories and appealing comic art chiefly by animator Steve Muffatti, and cartoonists Warren Kremer and Ernie Colon.

Leslie Cabarga and I spent the summer mining the Harvey Comics vaults and cherry-picked the best of the original Richie Rich comics of the 50s and 60s for a new trade paperback volume due out next month. This is the second of several high quality Harvey Comics reprint books we are compiling for Dark Horse.

If you’ve only been exposed to the latter spin-off comic books of the 1970s and 80s, the cheap animated TV shows or that Macaulay Culkin movie, I urge you to give this volume a look. Amazon has just put our Richie Rich book up for pre-order and has posted the the first several pages, including the entire first six-page Richie story from Little Dot #1 (click the Search Inside: Amazon Online Reader option).

Philipp Lenssen’s ambitious comics website Cover Browser attempts to compile the covers to every popular comic book ever published. He has a long way to go, but I’m happy to report he’s just expanded his entries to include several of my favorite comedy and animation titles including Dell’s Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, DC’s Sugar and Spike, Funny Stuff and Real Screen Comics and Creston’s Giggle and Ha-Ha Comics. Lots of good inspiration here and well worth a browse.

Once again the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive provides a new piece of the giant jigsaw puzzle that is the history of animated cartoons.

Steve Worth has scanned sections of a December 1945 issue of Coronet magazine which includes an autobiography of Bugs Bunny (illustrated with original images loosely based on the storyboards from A Hare Grows In Manhattan (released in May 1947). Anybody have any guesses as to who did the art?

Yesterday’s Mother Goose and Grimm by Mike Peters.

Reader Lliam Amor spotted this 1968 Gene Hazelton Pete Alvarado (see Mark Evanier’s comment) Yogi Bear Sunday comic strip original on the Heritage Auction site and thought it was interesting because (a) “the great line work & paste up marks” and (b) “the fact that Yogi has no hesitation about reading Playbear in front of the young and impressionable Boo Boo…”

Why we love Bizarro.

Went to Meltdown Comics tonight and found out that two weeks from now they will be having a three day exhibit and opening reception for Project Bart. This exhibition features customized versions of Bart Simpson by 20 contemporary pop artists (the exhibit will come to New York’s Toy Tokyo Showroom Gallery in September). The Meltdown reception is on Wednesday August 1st from 7pm to 11pm.

While I was there I noticed the new Casper comics reprint book, assembled by Leslie Cabarga and myself, is now on sale. Not only on sale, but it was displayed as the “Manager’s Pick”. It was supposed to make its world premiere debut at the San Diego Comic Con next week, but it doesn’t quite have an embargo… like Harry Potter. So pick it up now, and enjoy!