Continuing our April Fool’s Month theme of amateur artists and pranksters, we bring you a sampling of Billy the Boy Artist by Ed Payne, a comic strip about a boy whose shtick was to play pranks on the depth perception-deprived adults surrounding him, by making paintings so realistic, that his victims were tricked into reacting as if the paintings were real.

Billy the Boy Artist was published in the Boston Sunday Globe from 1899 to 1955. The below examples come from the 1910-published strip reprint book, Billy the Boy Artist’s Book of Funny Pictures, from C.M. Clark Publishing.

Click on any picture, to see an enlarged version.

Doug Wheeler