THE WHOLE WORLD IS ASKING: WHERE'S WALDO

Where's Waldo?

It took us six months, but we finally found the adventurous traveler and star of the Where's Waldo? books _ and his busy creator, Martin Handford _ in England.

Waldo is 5-foot-8, in his late teens or early 20s, thin and wears a stocking cap _ even on the beach.

"He's a happy-go-lucky, friendly adventurer. He always sees the good in people, never the bad," Handford said recently in a telephone interview from London. "He doesn't judge people."

Handford clarified that Waldo was not a model of himself. He said Waldo "may be subconsciously (a clone), but I haven't set out to model him on myself."

And for some reason, Waldo's always getting lost.

Handford explained, "Some of the chaotic, mad scenes that Waldo appears in, it's so unlikely that anyone would appear in those situations in the first place, but you have to know that it is almost a fantasy in itself."

Waldo is currently featured in four books _ soon to be five _ which are distributed in the United States by Little, Brown & Co. Handford has entertained his audiences for five years by hiding Waldo in pictures.

Waldo is growing in popularity and expanding his stardom as he appears on everything from T-shirts to a Saturday morning television show (10:30 a.m. on WISH, Channel 8).

"I don't actually draw everything you see on merchandise," Handford said, "but I do judge as closely as possible any merchandise that is sold."

Handford is flattered about spin-offs from his idea, such as Where's Dan Quayle?

"I'm quite pleased about it, because it must show that the Waldo books are successful if it is encouraging other artists to publish books in a similar style," he said.

"My only worry about the Dan Quayle book is that it's a political book . . . And I am concerned that people who don't know the Waldo books might think that it is also a book by Martin Handford. And I wouldn't want anyone associating what I do with something serious, like politics."

Like many children, Handford didn't like school while he was growing up. Reading illustrated history books encouraged him to learn, he said. History continues to be his favorite subject.

"The Waldo books are an ideal opportunity for me to do historical kinds of pictures with a lot of humor in them," he said.

Twelve years ago, Handford was working as a free-lance artist when he was discovered by a British book publishing agent who was walking past his desk. His specialty was drawing crowd scenes.

"(The agent) felt that there was enough scope whereby they could put lots of my pictures together and make a book," Handford said. He thought his drawings needed a theme to tie them all together, and "it was at that point that I invented the character, Waldo, who would be lost in each scene so that the reader could search for him."

The character is called "Wally" in England.

"The reason for that is because, in England, Wally is a sort of jovial, funny kind of name. It's not a name that's taken very seriously," Handford explained.

"The American book publishers . . . chose Waldo, and I would imagine that Waldo had the same sort of feeling about it," he added.

Why doesn't Waldo have a last name?

"I like Waldo to have an air of mystery about him. I wouldn't want to give him a surname or explain what family he might have had," he said.

It takes quite a while from the time Handford starts working on a book until it arrives in bookstores. He said drawing all the pictures takes a year, with another six to nine months to get the book published and distributed.

Handford always begins his drawings the same way. "When I start drawing, I always work in the same way. I work from the left-hand side of the page to the right. I'll do a small area in black and white and then add the color.

"Then, like a jigsaw, I work my way across the page. I'll put Waldo in wherever I think it's a good place to put him. I don't actually plan it out before I start the picture," he said.

Handford enjoys making kids happy with Waldo. "If the character is successful, I take that as evidence that there must be some people out there that like what I'm doing. It's a wonderful form of flattery."

Waldo brings fun to people in more than 30 countries. From America and France to Israel and Japan, more and more kids are searching for Waldo.

Censorship is an issue that troubles many authors, and Handford is no exception. Some libraries are banning the Waldo books because of nudity in beach scenes.

"Well, I'm sorry about that, because if it's really caused people offense and if it's upset people, that's certainly not my intention," he said.

Another cause for complaints about his books is his type of humor.

"If anyone is complaining about the kind of humor _ I think that some people have said that they think the humor is a bit on the violent side.

"I think if the pictures were full of just ordinary things with no incidents happening, I don't think they'd be as entertaining."

On the lighter side, does Waldo have friends or a family?

"Well, yes, he certainly does have a slowly growing group of friends around him," Waldo's creator said. "You might have encountered them in the books.

"There's a character called Wizard Whitebeard, who appeared in The Great Waldo Search and gave Waldo a quest.

"Waldo's always now accompanied by his faithful dog, Woof. Occasionally, he meets up with a girl who is a friend of his called Wenda," he added.

"I'd like to feel that if I was younger, if I was a child who had recently been introduced to Waldo, that I would consider him as a friend. It is my sincere hope that young people do see him as a friendly character."

He hopes the Waldo books encourage young people to learn.

"Speaking from experience, I know that when I was very young and I was just beginning to learn at school, books like Waldo were the instruments that encouraged me to learn," Handford noted.

And, as we said before: Where's Waldo? We think we found him.