Where do they get those wonderful toys?: 18 obscenely wealthy comic-book and cartoon characters

1. Bruce
Wayne

The "gentlemen adventurer" has been a staple of
pulp fiction since the penny-dreadful tales of Spring-Heeled Jack, but the
introduction of Batman and his alter ego Bruce Wayne in 1939 helped codify the
concept of the crime-fighting billionaire. A tragic figure, Wayne battles the
denizens of the underworld as a way of exacting revenge for the murder of his
parents when he was just a boy. He's also a playboy and a philanthropist,
wooing glamour girls under the guise of a grinning dim-bulb, and giving away
millions to the needy under the auspices of the Wayne Foundation. And yes, he
dedicates a good portion of his fortune to weapons, vehicles, costumes, and the
banks of computers in his underground lair. In the 1989 movie Batman, The Joker asks, "Where
does he get those wonderful toys?" Answer: He pays for them, jack.

2. Danny Rand

Another crime-fighter scarred by tragedy and
financed by piles of dough, Danny Rand (a.k.a. Iron Fist) spends his days
running a gigantic corporation and his nights kung-fu fighting, sometimes in
partnership with Luke "Power Man" Cage. Rand inherited his wealth after his parents
died when his father's business partner betrayed them all during a trip to the
mystical city of K'un L'un. Fortunately, K'un L'un
also happens to be the world's premier source for the iron-fist abilities that
allow Rand to focus his chi on ass-kicking, a skill upon which no one can place
a price.

3.
Hunter Rose

The
portrait of prodigy Hunter Rose that writer-artist Matt Wagner draws in Grendel:
Devil By The Deed is
one of the insufferably cultured, urbane socialite—a wealthy novelist
sipping wine in the plush study of his mansion. Who just so happens to
moonlight as the kingpin of a criminal empire. It's all a front for Rose's true
identity, of course: The archetypal, eternally reincarnated antihero known as
Grendel. With so many guises-within-guises, however, the smug, sly, vicious
Rose is almost a subversion of the Bruce Wayne-style
millionaire-turned-superhero.

4. Scrooge
McDuck

You don't become the richest duck in Duckburg by
spending lavishly, and indeed, what sets Donald Duck's rich Uncle Scrooge apart
from nearly every other cartoon fat cat is his miserliness. McDuck's property
is dominated by an enormous money bin, with various gauges to determine just how
full or (relatively) depleted his coffers are. When the pile starts to shrink,
McDuck grabs Donald, Huey, Dewey, and Louie and goes adventuring, looking for
gold, oil, or whatever commodity will coax his fellow ducks to quack, "Put it
on my bill!" No pun intended.

5. Veronica
Lodge

It seems like a no-brainer for Archie Andrews. His
sometime-girlfriend Betty Cooper is generous, athletic, smart, skilled in the
kitchen, drop-dead gorgeous, and totally devoted to him. So why does he spend
so much time pining for the vain, selfish, clumsy, clueless Veronica Lodge?
Could it be that she's the richest girl in town? When you're a middle-class
jerk with barely enough scratch to keep your jalopy street-legal, and you meet
a gal with so much green that she wears a new outfit practically every hour,
you can't help but think, "I want in." You'll even let her peck away at the
organ in your crummy garage band, provided that she and her irascible pop keep
ponying up for ski vacations and catered pool parties. We aren't saying Archie
is a gold digger, but… well, maybe we are.

6. Lex
Luthor

Over the first five decades of Superman stories,
Lex Luthor was a run-of-the-mill criminal mastermind who spent most of his time
in prison, coming up with elaborate schemes to make money, destroy his
arch-nemesis, and conquer the world. In 1986, when writer-artist John Byrne
helped revamp the Superman line of comics, he reconceived Luthor as more of a
white-collar criminal, using his genius to amass wealth (and, ahem, to try and
destroy Superman) rather than resorting to out-and-out theft. This version of
Luthor has remained the dominant one in the DC Universe ever since, in spite of
episodes of cloning, presidential runs, and the occasional farcical trial.
Though he's the featured player in Superman's gallery of rogues, Luthor is
really a lot like Bruce Wayne: another filthy-rich orphan who buys the
technology he needs to live out his obsessive power fantasies.

7. Charles Montgomery Burns

Speaking of obsessive power fantasies, The
Simpsons'
ultra-rich Monty Burns sometimes seems to exist just so the show's writers can
come up with fun new ways for him to take evil advantage of his billions.
Whether it's releasing his attack hounds on anyone who bores or irritates him,
ordering The Rolling Stones killed, breeding flying attack monkeys, or building
a huge device to block out the sun so more residents of Springfield will use
the electricity generated by his nuclear power plant, he's all about abusing
the power that comes with wealth. Homer Simpson, trying to prove a point about
greed: "Let me ask you something. Does your money make you happy?" Burns:
"Yes!" Homer: "Okay, bad example."

8. Steve Dayton

Most billionaire superheroes consider costumed
adventuring a higher calling, and think of their fortunes as just a convenient
way to finance their mission. Not so Steve Dayton, the fifth richest man in the
DC Universe. Obsessed with winning the hand of Rita Farr—The Doom Patrol's
Elasti-Girl—Dayton used his wealth to construct a helmet that boosted his
brainpower, turning him into the psychokinetic do-gooder Mento. He then married
Farr, adopted teenage Doom Patroller Beast Boy, and ensconced them both in a
mega-mansion roughly the size of a Las Vegas casino. Later, Elasti-Girl died,
Dayton went nuts, Beast Boy changed his name a couple of times, Dayton became a
crime lord for a while, a new Elasti-Girl arrived from a parallel dimension,
and so on and so on. All of which proves that no matter how much money you
have, if you're a minor DC character, nothing can buy your way out of
convoluted continuity reboots.

9. Tony
Stark

How many $100 million suits of armor has Tony
Stark totaled during his tenure as Iron Man? How many has he built for his pal
Rhodey? What does the upkeep cost on Avengers Mansion? How many times has that particular piece of
property been destroyed and rebuilt? If little boys and girls all over the
country see the Iron Man movie this summer and want to grow up to be weapons
manufacturers, who can blame them? That's a gig that apparently pays
handsomely.

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10. Daddy
Warbucks

As the life and legacy of Tony Stark has proven,
it's okay to be a war profiteer if you use that money to do good. Oliver
Warbucks operates on a smaller scale—he's used his cash to help bail out
one trouble-prone little girl over and over again. After taking in (but not
adopting) Little Orphan Annie, Warbucks served as the deus ex machina in her
stories for decades, swooping in at the last minute to spread some dough around
and save the day. Never one for playboy idleness, Warbucks worked hard for his
war-bucks, traveling the world and burning the midnight oil to make sure his
munitions plants were cranking out enough bombs to meet the demand. His long
absences left Annie plenty of time and space to screw things up royally, but
his dedication also assured that there'd be plenty of blood money left in the
till to patch everything up.

11. Rollo/Wilbur
Van Snobbe

Call it Veronica's Law: Every benign,
youth-oriented comic book or comic strip requires at least one resident rich
kid. Nancy
has Rollo, a cheerful little bow-tied boy who considers the business angle of
every decision he makes, right down to picking an afternoon snack. Little
Lulu has
Wilbur Van Snobbe, a mean-spirited little prick who uses his money and servants
to play tricks on the neighborhood kids. Do you have an idea for a cartoon
starring a cute little kid character? Don't forget to throw in a junior
moneybags. In fact, that isn't a bad idea for a name: Junior Moneybags. Quick!
Trademark it!

12. Richie
Rich

In the Casper/Wendy/Little Dot universe, the
requisite miniature swell is Richie Rich, who proved so popular after his early
guest appearances that he became the leading man of his own Harvey Comics
magazine and cartoon series. Though he's basically heroic, Richie's shtick is
that he's so loaded, he can't properly comprehend what it's like not to have
money to burn—literally. Richie drives cars shaped like money, lives in a
house packed with money, and even walks on carpets patterned after money.
Unlike with other comically wealthy, kid-friendly characters, money for Richie
Rich isn't just a resource, it's a theme.

13. Wilson Fisk

Better known as the Kingpin, Wilson Fisk is a
walking vision of wealth's ability to corrupt. A man who's used his tremendous
intelligence only to serve himself, Fisk has long bedeviled New York's
superheroes, particularly Spider-Man and Daredevil. Wealthy beyond measure, and
surprisingly agile for a man of his, um, carriage, Fisk uses money as a
superpower. If a thing—or, just as often, a person—can be bought,
he can use it for his own ends. His greatest weakness: Integrity, whether in
heroes or journalists unwilling to grant him his fig leaf of respectability.
His other weakness: his frequently ailing wife Vanessa, a reminder of more
innocent times, even if she's no angel when able to leave her sickbed.

14. Adrian Veidt

Authentic superpowers are all but impossible to
come by in Alan Moore's gritty "superheroes in real life" series Watchmen, so his costumed and
caped crusaders have to base their shticks around entirely mundane abilities:
Nite Owl is a talented tinkerer, Rorschach and The Comedian are exceptionally
mean sons of bitches, the Silk Spectre looks good in tights and a leotard, and
Ozymandius—a.k.a. Adrian Veidt, is a
genius. ("The smartest man on the cinder," The Comedian calls him, when
predicting the imminent nuclear catastrophe that will render his intelligence
moot.) Turns out that being smart trumps being mean, pretty, or mechanically
gifted—while his fellow hero wannabes are living in run-down apartments
and saving people from tenement fires, Ozymandius is giving away his parents'
vast fortune and earning one of his own, to prove himself. In short order, he
founds an Alexander The Great-like financial mega-empire, builds himself a
polar Fortress Of Solitude full of high-tech gear, hires the world's greatest
artists and scientists for creepy secret projects, and buys himself a bevy of disposable
servants. Some might say he's just trying to live out the last days of Earth in
style, but Ozymandius is more the type to buy his way out of Armageddon.

15. H.R.
Costigan

Even though Jaime Hernandez's contributions to his
and his brothers' Love And Rockets series lean toward naturalistic stories about
ex-punkers struggling with the onset of middle age, he's also strongly
influenced by adventure comics and kiddie comics, and elements of both have
crept into his work from time to time. When Hernandez's heroine Maggie was
jetting around the world as a high-tech mechanic, she frequently got embroiled
in the nefarious business schemes of H.R. Costigan, a devil-horned magnate who
owns multiple mansions and has his fingers in many pies. Eventually, Costigan married
Maggie's delusional friend Beatriz (a.k.a. Penny Century), and promised to make
her into a superhero. Alas, he failed and eventually died, leaving Penny plenty
of cash to allay her disappointment.

16. Darcy Parker

Terry Moore's long-running indie series Strangers
In Paradise
started out as a sort of domestic comedy centering on good-girl art and a lot
of yelling, but it quickly morphed into a thriller pitting one of the
protagonists against a figure from her past: Darcy Parker, a scheming,
powerful, seductive woman rich enough to own her very own crime syndicate. (Her
character page on Moore's SIP website sums it up neatly: "Occupation:
Billionaire.") It was sometimes hard to believe how a couple of relatively
ordinary starcrossed lovers managed to evade or escape a woman with a pocketful
of politicians, a stable full of highly trained prostitute-spies, and half of
America's economy in her ample purse, but Darcy's schemes did manage to provide
a constant distraction from the overplayed will-they-or-won't-they central
romance.

17.
Charles Xavier

For
a rich kid, Charles Xavier turned out pretty good: After inheriting a mansion
and a sprawling estate from his wealthy scientist father, Xavier—no
slouch in the egghead department himself—devoted his smarts, superpowers,
and considerable resources to helping his fellow mutants. Under the guise of a
prep school named The Xavier Institute For Higher Learning, Xavier's X-Mansion
became the training ground and home base for the X-Men. Still, high-tech home
improvements like Cerebro and The Danger Room must have put a large dent in
Xavier's hefty inheritance. Wonder what he charges for tuition?

18.
Oliver Queen

DC's
bow-wielding vigilante Green Arrow—secret identity: Oliver
Queen—always seemed to have roots in the Robin Hood mythos. But in the
early '70s, the writer-artist team of Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams decided to
get a bit more literal with the influence. The pair took Queen's fortune away,
and the former billionaire playboy was suddenly shafted by all the social and
economic ills of the Nixon era. Scruffy, streetwise, and even a bit leftist,
Queen teamed up with the straitlaced Green Lantern for a short run that helped
revolutionize superhero comics in the '70s—and made it, for the first
time, kind of disgusting for a superhero to be rich.