Colonel Blink first appeared in The Beezer comic in 1958, and was drawn by Tom Bannister for most of its run. Named in parody of long-running, newspaper comic strip character Colonel Blimp, Blink was an exceptionally short-sighted ex-military man who refused to acknowledge that he was blind as a bat. Blink lived with his long suffering “Auntie” (though she was noticably younger than him) and put-upon dog Rover; along with Blink’s unfortunate neighbour, Cartwright, Rover and Auntie suffered a never-ending series of misadventures caused by Blink’s myopia.
Flashbacks to his military days proved that his visual problems were not a recent development, and that he caused just as much chaos in wartime as he did after retirement; his rise to Colonel was due to one commanding officer after another promoting Blink simply to get him away from their command! When he served in India his bat man (soldier assigned to an officer as a personal servant) was the Sikh Sham Poo.
Colonel Blink continued to appear in Beezer right up to and after its merger with Topper, and in 1990 creator Nick Brennan introduced Colonel Blink’s nephew, the equally short-sighted Blinky, in his own strip.
In 1992 Corgi released a Beezer Ford Popular van with Colonel Blink emblazoned on the side as part of Corgi’s Comic Classic series.
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