The Swashbuckling Musketeers

A film clapperboard hangs in the top corner announcing "The Swashbuckling Musketeers," and below it hundreds of costumed extras swarm a studio backlot: plumed hats, powdered wigs, ball gowns, duelling swords, ladders, fountains and staircases that seem to lead nowhere in particular. The little printed note on the board is part of the joke, a set of instructions for the extras telling them to swagger and swash on cue. This comes from Martin Handford's 1993 book Where's Wally? In Hollywood, in which the striped wanderer drops into one movie set after another, from Roman epics to sci-fi invasions.

Handford was a London illustrator who loved drawing crowds long before Wally existed. His publisher suggested adding a character to find in the throng, and the first book appeared in 1987. Each scene was drawn by hand in ink and watercolour over roughly two months, which explains why nearly every tiny figure is up to something of its own: someone toppling off a horse, someone stealing a hat, two musketeers crossing swords over what looks like nothing at all. The crowded, comic chaos owes a fair bit to Bruegel and Bosch, only played for laughs. Wally is in here somewhere, red and white striped and utterly unbothered, along with his usual companions and a lost walking stick.