Debuting as a cow-licked Croesus in the comic books of a simpler time, perpetually pre-teen tycoon Richie Rich has enjoyed a career which has spanned television, film, animation, a brief super-hero career with his aged butler, softcore premium cable gay porn a lot of time spent getting into all sorts of antics involving oversized gemstones and fat bundles of frog-green cash. Still, how much does the world really know about America's favorite poor little rich boy? Follow along for the secrets of the strange life of Richie Rich.

1946: Richie Rich is born Richard Ancil Coleman to nurse practitioner Edmonia Sue Coleman and her husband, forklift operator W.G.Coleman in Zion, Illinois. When the young Richard Coleman shows an uncanny youthful proclivity for wealth-oriented sight gags, the couple make arrangements for an adoption – in name only – by the publicity-minded Rich family of Richville, Richsylvania (also known as Hanover, New Hampshire). The Colemans continue to provide day-to-day care for the child while the Riches, grooming Richie to serve as a "mascot" for Rich Industries, familiarize the tot with the amok robots and an endless stream of burglars in newsie caps with which he'll have to deal on a monthly basis.

1953: Richie Rich makes his debut at age 7 in the pages of Little Dot, formerly a lightly censored hardcore men's magazine (lurid cover blurbs inclined the reader to take note of the "exceptionally little dots" used by 1950s-era censors to hide models' private parts). Little Dot remained a children's humor comic from 1953 through 1974, when it became an advocacy publication for the legalization of LSD. The last two Richie Rich strips in Little Dot appear in the first two issues of the magazine's LSD-advocacy incarnation, and are goddamn crazy.

1960: As Richie soars past puberty, his childlike appearance fails to fade. Doctors eventually diagnose the millionaire moppet with focal segmental glomerulosclerosis, a congenital kidney disease which affects height, citing as a symptom the edema which is a common indicator of the disease and which also explains why Richie insists on wearing those weird, formless white booties.

1965: Richie Rich files suit against his biological parents for money withheld from his earnings, as well as several ham-sized rubies and lunchbox-sized bars of gold which had additionally been pirated from the southwest wing of allowance vault #17. It is alleged at this time that the Colemans had denied vital medication to their son, in order to retain his highly profitable diminutive stature.

"No one wants to read the comic book adventures of a 'Poor Little Rich MAN'" stressed Richie's adoptive father, Richard Rich Sr., during an interview with The New Republic in 1991. "We gotta keep that kid small. Frankly, I believe they made the right decision."

1972: Seeking new avenues of self-expression, Richie debuts on London's West End in a production of the famously all-nude avant garde musical "Oh Calcutta!" He is released after 7 weeks owing to a visible and persistent erection which he maintained during performances.

Immediately following his dismissal from the program, Richie takes up with his personal assistant May Pang and moves into his expensive houseboat for an eighteen-month period he often refers to as his "Lost Weekend". In 1974, he is reunited with his second wife, Gloria Glad, and their youngest son, Pee-Wee. Freckles, his illegitimate son from an earlier relationship with fellow former child millionaire Mayda Munny, remains bitter.

1982: Now 36 and living in California, Richie develops an eye-raising reputation as "a dear friend of children", hosting many sleepovers and playdates with a veritable parade of young boys at his expansive mansion estate (famously outfitted with an amusement park, video arcade, and a display featuring the skeleton of Dollar the Dollarmatian).

Claims of child abuse bring federal investigators to Rich's doors, and a search of the several palatial bedroom suites reveal the desiccated corpse of a still-unidentified young boy dubbed by Medical Examiners "Casper Doe". The State of California determines that the boy's unfortunate death was very likely "friendliness-related".

1994: In an attempt to revive his flagging career and redeem his soiled reputation, Richie accepts a role in Quentin Tarantino's ground-breaking films Pulp Fiction and, later, Jackie Brown. A brief cameo in Tarantino's 2004 sequel Kill Bill 2 was cut, owing to Rich's visible and persistent erection.

2005: Richie famously ends his relationship with second wife Gloria Glad to marry Angelina Jolie, whom he met on the set of some horrid piece of schlock she was in and which everyone only pretends to like because Jolie all does charity for African orphans and no one wants to be a dick about how absolutely crummy her movies are. Sorry, it's true, she's awful. Good work with those orphans, though, keep that up.

2007: FX Television produces a dramatized biography of Richie Rich's life in its short-lived television drama "The Riches". Eddie Izzard's accent is unbelievable like whoa.

2009: Richie Rich is announced dead at age 63, sending shockwaves through the blogosphere, the Twittersphere, and the Keenbeanosphere, a social networking site developed by the disgraced former chief inventor for Rich Industries and avowed white supremacist Professor Emil Keenbean.

Rich's funeral is staged a week later in Jackie Jokers Memorial Stadium. His cousin Reginald "Reggie" Van Dough Jr delivers a heartfelt speech to the assembled crowd before breaking down into tears and leaving the microphone. Rich's body is subsequently interred in the Rich family mausoleum, a comically-oversized solid gold and jewel-encrusted tomb occupying fourteen acres in the middle of a hastily rendered forest setting.

On one final, truly sad note, the platinum-and-sapphire "cent" symbol which took the place of the "c" in the Rich family name on the mausoleum plaque fell from its position over the entrance during the final public viewing. One mourner was killed, fourteen were injured, and several hundreds were shocked so badly that many hovered above the ground in a gentle leaning position in surprise, or were promptly dehydrated by titanic beads of sweat leaping from their terrified faces.