Business magazines have this running battle to list the world’s richest people. As if that wasn’t enough, in April Forbes listed the richest fictional characters.
Topping the list is Carlisle Cullen, patriarch of the Cullen coven of vampires in the Twilight series of novels. As the magazine put it, “Cullen, age 370, has accumulated a fortune of $34.1 billion — much of it from long-term investments made with the aid of his adopted daughter Alice, who picks stocks based on her ability to see into the future.” If only we could do that, we could write for Barron’s. Also on the short list: Thurston Howell III (the character played by Jim Backus on the CBS television comedy “Gilligan’s Island”) and Scrooge McDuck (Uncle Scrooge to his nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie).
To commemorate the release of “Iron Man 2,” Ranker devised a list of the richest comic book heroes and wealthiest villains of all time. Its top five? A surprising group that includes Black Panther, Namor the Sub-Mariner, Adrien Veidt (Ozymandias), Batman and Lex Luthor.
Now comes word from Forbes of the five highest-earning videogame characters, and topping the list is none other than Mario, Nintendo’s plumber who has leaped ahead of the pack since his debut in the 1981 arcade game Donkey Kong. Also on the list: Pikachu, the voice of John Madden, Sonic the Hedgehog and Link from the “Legend of Zelda.”
As Mario would say, “Yahoo!”
I’m not even going to get into the absurdities of life we’ve seen paraded across screen: Balloon Boy, OJ, Watergate, the Lewinski scandal, the McCarthy hearings. Maybe the revolution will be televised.