Favorite Fictional Character Wednesday

Favorite Fictional Character is a meme started by Ryan at Wordsmithonia he started my Favorite Fictional Character posts out of love for some of the greatest characters ever dreamed up, some of which never get the recognition they deserve. They have all moved, inspired, taught, or in one way or another shaped his thought process and my taste. It's because of these characters that he loves to get lost in a good book, be enthralled by a movie or TV show, or be moved by a poem or song. They all mean something to him and from what he's seen he's not alone in that.

I visit Wordsmithsonia every Wednesday to see what fun new character pops up!  This week I thought I would try out my own.  I am going to pick Where's Waldo.  That's right.  Where's Waldo!!  I just love this character.  Perhaps it is from when I was younger and my mom, sister and I would be so excited when a new edition would come out.  The job and amazement we would see on other people's faces when we would introduce them to Waldo. 

Waldo surprisingly is still a major character in today's pop culture.  He has a twitter, several facebook pages, his own webpage where you can order neat items.  There was once a cartoon and I can still sing the theme song at the beginning in my head!  From 1993 - 1998 the Where's Waldo single panel comic strip appeared in over 100 newspapers in America.  There are several reoccurring characters in the series... which you will also find in the books.

Waldo traveled alone at first but in subsequent novels more characters were added.
- Odlaw was the Wario to Waldo's Mario. First appearing in The Magnificent Poster Book (1991), Odlaw was narrated as evil though he never appears to be committing dastardly acts in the books.
- Wizard Whitebeard first showed up in The Great Waldo Search (1989) as the person responsible for helping Waldo discover the truth about himself and his past.
- Wilma appeared in The Ultimate Fun Book (1990) but then explicably was replaced by her twin sister/doppelganger Wenda for In Hollywood (1993).
- Woof also debuted in The Ultimate Fun Book (1990) but was defined only by his tail until his full body appearance on the last page of The Wonder Book (1997).
  Hours of fun.  I Spy books came out later and I did try to pick those up but don't like those as much at all.  

Some facts about Waldo's name:
Known as Wally in his native England and Waldo in the U.S. and Canada, the main character of the series has many other localized names including:
French - Charlie
Hindi - Hetti
Norway - Willy
Croatian - Jura
German - Walter
Danish - Holger

Another fact I found:

The offending cartoon breast that caused Where's Waldo to appear on the ALA top 100 banned books list from 1990-1999 was covered up in the 1997 special release.



Source for information:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/donnad/things-you-didnt-know-about-wheres-waldo

If you have a Favorite Fictional Character for Wednesday post your link here!!