I suppose you have a point - Richie does tend to live in a fairly ludicrous world - but you must admit that the character himself is just blah. Mind you, this is the case with a number of characters - Tintin, Dick Tracy, Mickey Mouse - but generally speaking, those characters have exciting enough adventures and are surrounded by an interesting enough supporting cast that their personal ho-humishness can be overlooked. Richie has none of that - he may live in an unusual and unpredictable world, which can lead to some interesting situations, but he doesn't really have exciting adventures - or, at any rate, not enough of them to keep things interesting - and his supporting cast is largely as blah as he is, comprised largely of one-note characters designed to keep the story rolling (his dad is rich and fatherly and smokes a pipe, his mom is rich and motherly and boring, Cadbury the butler is butlerly to the point of mania, Freckles is... freckley, Reggie is mean, the inventor guy is an inventor guy, the chef is the very model of a chef, etc., etc.). The one possible exception to this would be Irona, the temperamental robot maid - she IS pretty interesting, but we never saw nearly enough of her. As someone who tends to focus primarily on character and story, all these single-purpose characters annoy me. A few funny lines and wacky inventions aren't enough to make up for that, the potential for crack (or, as I prefer to think of it 'Mnuh?') regardless. Mind you, I don't want to stomp all over your childhood - I'll freely grant that there must be SOMETHING there to draw that much attention; I just haven't the faintest idea what it is. And you obviously read a lot more of the character than I - I've only read a few issues. So maybe I missed something, but I don't plan on trying to find it, thank you - I'll leave that to others.