Here's a delightful series that William F. Marriner penned for the Philadelphia Inquirer. In Billy Blinks the Boy Bandit, Marriner traces the travails of a little kid who has decided that the wrong side of the law is the fun side. Billy is a thief, specializing primarily in safecracking. He steals toy safes from other little kids, but never gets to enjoy the spoils of his hard work. Just like the Shadow always told us, the weed of crime bears bitter fruit.
Billy Blinks the Boy Bandit appeared sporadically in the Inky's Sunday comic section from February 4 to September 9 1906. Apparently by then our junior yeggman finally saw the error of his ways and switched to a law-abiding path. The scans above are from the collection of Cole Johnson.
I think the top example was the only time the character's name was spelled (or misspelled) "BINKS". It ran on 18 February 1906 in the parent paper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, though in sydication (such as The Los Angeles Herald) it appeared one moth later.
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