The Underground Hunters

Deep beneath the surface of the earth, a chaotic underground world unfolds in "The Underground Hunters," part of the famous "Where's Wally?" series by British illustrator Martin Handford. Since the late 1980s these puzzle pictures have delighted readers around the globe, known as "Where's Waldo?" in some countries. The scroll tucked into the top left corner explains the setup: Wally and the Wizard have stumbled into a cavern crawling with hunters, snaking dragons, and monsters, with a hidden scroll somewhere waiting to be discovered.

Every part of this scene bursts with tiny hand drawn figures, most of them dressed in blue and scattered across a landscape of brown boulders and orange dragons that twist through the rock. The trick is finding Wally in his red and white striped shirt, and the sea of similar colors makes that surprisingly hard. Each little person is caught mid action, so the more you scan the cavern, the more small dramas you spot happening in the corners.

These pictures might look like nothing more than games, and in a way they are, but the amount of careful work packed into a single page is genuinely impressive. Handford rewards a patient eye, hiding jokes and surprises among the crowds. Grownups and kids alike keep coming back to the same simple pleasure of hunting for one small figure lost in the mess.