Richie Rich: Rich Rescue #2

July 17, 2011

Title: The Pursuit of Pesos and other stories

Writers: Buddy Scalera, Tom DeFalco, Matt Anderson, Patrick Rills
Art: Marcelo Ferreira, Armando Zanker, Amy Mebberson, James Silvani
Colorist: Dustin Evans, Jake Myler, Amy Mebberson
Letterer: David Hedgecock
Cover: Jack Lawrence
Editor: Matt Anderson    
Publisher: Ape Entertainment/KiZoic

Rich Rescue’s latest gig sends them to the depths of the jungle, hired by a museum to find a legendary diamond. The gem turns out to be magic, the team gets hurled back in time, and soon Richie and company find themselves being chased by dinosaurs. The fun starts here, folks! It’s not a bad little story, but it’s a bit unfocused. There isn’t even anything there to tell us where it takes place – they unearth a pretty generic old temple and go back to face a bunch of generic old cavemen. The adventure sequences work well. It seems like Buddy Scalera and Marcelo Ferreira are doing their best to conjure up some classic adventure tales, the likes of which we got from Carl Barks back in the day, and that’s all to the good. They just need a little work.

The back-up features are of varying quality. The first one, where Reggie “wins” the use of Irona for 24 hours, is really very funny, and a nice way to give Richie’s arrogant cousin a little comeuppance. On the other hand, Cadbury steps up next for a terribly trite story where a bunch of terrorists invade a concert screaming gibberish about the band’s “pro-environment” agenda. The villains of the piece are soulless cutouts, almost lacking even in a second dimension, let alone a third, and while you don’t expect a story of this nature to be Shakespeare, there could be at least a little thought put into giving them a motivation that has at least some form of internal logic. The funniest part is when Cadbury throws out the line “I will take formal over cliché any day.” Congratulations, Cadbury, you’re both.

I like this title, and I’m glad that Richie Rich and company are back. But there’s definitely room for improvement.

Rating: 7/10