WHERE’S PUCK? IT’S A CHRISTMAS SEEK-AND-FIND!!!
Take a trip to the North Pole for a Where’s Waldo? style adventure starring the Puck cast! (Or a Where’s Wally? style adventure if you’re across the pond.) The whole gang’s there along with a plentiful pile of elves!
As for this comic…
We come to the revelation that readers have been screaming in the comments for weeks now: the obvious fact that the beard is, was and has always been the primary stumbling block on the road to Colin’s cosplay success.
Will we be able to handle a beardless Colin? Honestly, I don’t really know. I haven’t actually drawn him without a beard in a long, long time. Gonna be interesting.
Beard, um . . . No?
Oh, no one can SEE me. I have a beard.
Well, there’s nothing wrong with that.
I always found a beard itched too much. Stick with sideburns.
You just gotta stick with the beard for a while. The itch factor seems to settle over time.
never say that again…. EVER
He has to learn.
Well, first, would Puck care? She may be annoyed if he doesn’t consult her first, but I’m not sure she was ever that thrilled with the beard in the first place, she did once describe him as ‘Chewbacca’.
I mean, she started going out with him before he had a beard, back in the old series (it’s not as if we haven’t seen a beardless Colin before).
I think the one problem Colin may have is the ‘baby face’ syndrome. Where some men have a round young, ‘babyish’ face. The type that gets you asked for ID frequently ( more so I US than places like Australia where the difference between a 25 year old and an under 18 year old is easier than a 25 year old and an under 21 year old.) A beard can help make you look older, negating that look, so he may look younger without it.
Of course, that also depends on drawn face style. And quickly looking at the cast page, beards seem to be one tactic Gecko uses to make men appear older.
There are only 3 men in the comic who do not have beards. Tyler, who is younger, and ‘Doctor’ who has a steak of grey hair, glasses, and a slightly chilled chin to denote being older, and Dr. Plessner, who has glasses, is bald, and has hollowed cheek bones.
1. Colin has to learn someone you have to suffer for art. But is shaving too much suffering?
2. Will beardless Colin revert to his undergraduate personality, and will anyone notice?
3. What a fun voting incentive!!!
Beards definitely age a guy up. But at a certain age, which Colin is approaching, this factor is less appealing and you may want to start swinging the other way and trying to look younger.
The ‘not getting carded’ factor is a thing, I guess, but I think it’s WAY more prominent stateside. An Irish Youtuber I watched noted that in the States, they card EVERYONE. Like, even people who are obviously not under 21 get carded. Up here, not so much. The drinking age is 19, and you only get carded if you look straight-up teenage. Case in point: I have only ever been carded once. When I was twenty. And pulled up to the bar on a bicycle.
This also means that getting carded up here if you’re past a certain age becomes an incredible thrill because it really does mean they think you may be a teenager. So people like my wife get carded right into their forties and can boast about it. And people like me haven’t been carded in decades.
But yeah, when drawing in a cartoony style, age is harder to convey. Age is most often shown through hair color, weight, facial hair, etc. It’s harder to just ‘draw an old face’ because a cartoony style is a fundamental simplification that omits details, and age on a face is all in the details.
The incentive is to card. You can get fired or your business heavily fined. Some people hate it, some love it. But it’s usually nbetter to not risk your job.
Some people love it because it’s not THAT common to card the obviously older, but we do card deeper into people’s 20’s. Sometimes up to Twnty-Fifteen (no, that’s not year, it’s a way of saying 35 I just made up to be clever).
Again, that’s seemingly a stateside thing. Up here they’re less liberal with the carding. Like, you need to look legitimately young to get carded in Canada. I repeat: I have only been carded once in my WHOLE LIFE. At age twenty. On a bicycle. And throughout my twenties I was told that I possessed the cursed ‘baby face’, or as one older classmate put it, I looked like “such a pup”. Still not carded. Only reason I was carded that one time was because of the bicycle, I’m pretty sure.
Oh, we could be here for days on this one. 🙂
I started drinking beer in bars at 17. In Pennsylvania, where the alcohol control laws were written in 1933 by the party that had opposed Repeal. Just told bartenders I was 22 for five years. Worked better then than it would now.
At 19, I quit shaving. That helped. Haven’t felt a need to shave since, neither. Damn well is not underwear for the face. 🙂
The last time I got carded, I was 29, and it wasn’t because I looked like a teenager. The jerk bartender–and this was at noon on a Saturday after a long morning of hauling furniture and junk with the people I was with–didn’t like my looks and legally didn’t have to serve me because I didn’t have a PA Liquor Control Board ID card.
It has since occurred to me that he might have confused me with my local evil twin doppelganger, but it was years before we figured that out, and I called the Liquor Control Board. They told me that the bartender was right, BUT he could not have been busted for selling beer to a sober adult of legal age, either. I sent a nasty letter to the tavern, reminding them that a pissed-off customer will tell everyone about it for as long as they live. I’ve never been back in there, and I long ago lost track of how many owners went bust.
So many stories. But hey, fun to read. We have days if you want you continue. Weeks, even!
I’m 61… When someone asks me for ID because I don’t look old enough I say “God Bless You young man!” (or Young Lady, depending).. Show my ID, then strut like a peacock for 4 days!
If Colin’s beard is his underwear then Cy’s five-o-clock shadow is his boxer shorts.
Boxer shorts are cooler.
No Gecko. A mustache wouldn’t be a thong. It would be his codpiece. Shaved down and there’s no protection left.
I suppose they both make a certain statement.
So a beard without a mustache would be what? Crotchless underpants?
We’d submitted ‘thong’ in the alt-text, but your answer works too.
Yeah, I saw the alt-text, but it’s about a mustache without a beard. I’m talking about a beard without a mustache.
I don’t approve of that. At all. They’re never a good idea. Ever.
“So a beard without a mustache would be what?”
Amish. They’re making a point.
Is Cy leaning on his cane?
Yeah, a little. It’s not just for looks.
I see.
VOTING INCENTIVE !
Quite likely the BEST ever !
And the alliteration is inspired.
But… Let that Kitty Go !
Well, it already mauled at least one elf. Sometimes you gotta restrain the beast.
Why not just say that it also mailed the guy that Colin set up for adate with Phoebe in college.
@Pat
That was Gollum, right ?
I thot they were engaged.
I’m going to print out the Incentive and begin highlighting.
The only way it could be improved would be if it were “Clickable”, as in Hidden Object Games.
I’ll bet Casey from Amphibian.Com could do that.
His weekly strip used to be interactive. But lately he’s been more focused on Word Puns.
Almost as if his secret wish was to be an English Teacher rather than a Programmer.
Well, I’ll probably post an answer key when I put it on Patreon.
Honestly, it’s not that hard as a seek-and-find. There were a few things I didn’t consider when making it. One is the fact that all the characters you’re looking for are (for the most part) twice the height of the elves, which makes spotting them easy. Secondly, the Where’s Waldo? series is brilliant in that Waldo has a very, very overtly recognizable outfit which is so particular that you can spot him when only a little bit of him is showing. You can hide him behind a crowd, say, with only his glasses and hat showing, and you can still spot him. I didn’t feel I could do that with the Puck cast as well. Thirdly, I have EVEN MORE respect for Martin Handford now, because despite the complexity of the image, it’s only about a third as detailed as a regular Where’s Waldo? page. And I cheated by reusing elves. Mad respect for that guy.
I do suppose that could be why I spotted Mario last, after reading the list.
But Daphne was spotted by my little eye first.
After zooming in.
Well, that’s impressive because I consider her to be one of the hardest to find.
Personally, I checked “whole” image four times before realizing there is scrollbar and I’m missing quite a bit of it, INCLUDING PUCK.
There’s just too much detail to get it all on one screen!
@Pat
Not found Daphne yet.
Perhaps I don’t want to find her, tho.
I wonder if Colin can still shave without emptying a box of Bandaids ?
The first shave usually isn’t a problem. It’s the subsequent shaves that get painful.
Face is underwear for the beard.
In Soviet Russia, beard wears YOU.
There used to be a flash-animated online game that had you in mortal combat with the BEARD of the game’s designer.
I gotta tell ya’, them face-hairs was MAD_Feisty — surviving that game was NOT easy!
Why does it look like there’s something sticking out of Cy’s head in the last panel? I assume it’s actually something behind him, but I have no idea what it could be.
@Wyvern
Look in the first panel.
The “Arrow” is just a sleeve of a Tee Shirt.
You wanna get into acting (or even serious cosplay), you have to be prepared to sacrifice your hair for the costume. Dye it, cut it, shave it all off, grow it out and stop washing it for months… at the end of the day, it’s just hair, and you can usually change it back.
Sure, you can use a wig or bald cap, but your natural hair will generally look more “right” to anyone paying attention, as well as being far more comfortable after hours under hot lights or in crowded spaces.
This concept of sacrificing your hair becomes less palatable as one ages. For one, your hair gets less tolerant of abuse. And if you’re a guy and you’re my age and you have hair, you are generally just thankful for that and don’t want to tempt fate by removing it. I still remember when Wesley Snipes had his brows plucked back to form a widow’s peak for Blade because he thought it would look more vampire-ish. And he was right. But poor guy never grew those hairs back, I’m pretty sure.
@EG
As usual, Seinfeld has this covered:
The Little Jerry
“Elaine notices her boyfriend Kurt has an attractive head of hair in his driver’s license photo; he only shaves his head because he likes how it looks. She persuades him to regrow his hair, but when his first sprouts appear they discover he is going bald.”
Yeah, I can’t fathom the idea of a guy shaving his head for kicks when he possesses a full head of hair. I TOTALLY get shaving your head if you’re balding because I think it’s sometimes the best way to deal with the situation, but if you have hair? Don’t tempt fate. God will punish you for your foolishness.
Of course Elaine found Kurt sexy when his head was shaved.
But when she discovered he was bald – DUMP.
So are crumbs the skid marks?
Ew. Yes.
Plot twist, a shaved-and-shorn Colin turns into the sexiest Fred ever!
Puck take intense notice, and in nine months Miranda will have a brand-new sibling…
Two years ago, the Canadian Armed Forces finally allowed beards for all members who could grow a full, even, properly gorrmed beard. As a result, close to 60,000 people stopped shaving for a month. We quickly found out who actually looked GOOD in a beard, and who didn’t. Colin is in the former group. That being said…
Beards can be grown back easily. Heck, Ontario’s government is even HELPING Colin right now, since the entire province is going into lockdown starting Boxing Day. Colin will have to see EVEN FEWER PEOPLE because of this, and EVEN FEWER PEOPLE will be subjected to Colin re-growing his beard. Win-win, in my books.
If a moustache is either a thong or a codpiece, what is a goatee or Van Dyke beard? Are they the “Saxx” of facial hair because they gently hug the important bits?
Excellent TWC picture. I remember (way, WAY back) when my dad would bring in poster-sized colouring images with what seemed like thousands of small characters (think of a busy ski slope with chair lifts, trees, skiers, etc) that you coloured with markers or pencil crayons.
Well, if we remember correctly, Puck never really liked the beard. So losing it can only benefit him, I think. This is opposite to my situation. I have a relatively neat beard, vaguely akin to Colin’s. I have worn that beard for over fifteen years. The only reason I keep it, though, is the fact that the wife likes it.
And glad you like the voting incentive. It was a fun trip down memory lane.
A neat, trimmed beard looks best on me too. There ARE a few guys that look great sporting longer beards, and many who look far too “affected” in their mien. When it takes longer to groom your facial hair than it does to brush your teeth (or to shower), you have a -slight- problem… lol
As for hair – I have a full head of luxurious growth that I keep trimmed or shaved. Why you ask? Because I also have at least three cow licks. They make it impossible to style correctly. Also, I am a furnace, and a full head of hair keeps me too hot. Even in the winter. In Ottawa.
I used to think a big, bushy full beard was almost always a bad idea, but I’ve seen some guys who can pull it off. Usually they’re big guys – either super-jacked or heavy-set, but something about the beard just works with the size. The best example I can think of is the Youtuber Jirard Khalil, better known as The Completionist. He’s a bigger guy, but without the beard, he’s got that dreaded ‘baby face’ and he just looks like your average dude. With the full beard, he looks … formidable? Stately? Certainly more manly.
For me, my build is similar to Colin’s. A full, bushy beard would end up making me look like a hipster d-bag, I’m pretty sure.
What’s up with the Black Reindeer, all alone, flying to the left ?
I can relate. I’ll never shave again, by choice. If I’m beardless I’ve either had to be fitted for a respirator for a job and it needs an air tight fit. (Had to before, job putting up a building at a mine. Had to have a gas rated respirator to be on site.) Or I’ve gotten a gf who doesn’t like it.
Last time I shaved I couldn’t sleep for shit for over a week. My face always felt like I was sweating since the evaporation was right there at every movement of air. And when I was sleeping and the furnace came on, the air moving over my face would wake me up.
I haven’t shaved since. That was a few back. Other then that one time I haven’t shaved in nearly 20 years.
Trim. No bushman beard here.
Good man. We’re on the same page.
A hairy chin diaper mayhap? Pelty Chin Depends? Sooo many variations… heh…
Nightmare fuel.
A Merry Christmas* and a Happy New Year all! And may next year be at least . . . um . . . 75% less pandemicky.
* Or whatever holiday or none at all, this is about good wishes, dude.
A Merry “Let’s make the best of this” Christmas and Happy “Let’s pray for better” New Year to you too!
Merry Winter Solstice, because you may choose to ignore any or all holidays but you can’t ignore astronomical fact :-).
(Except, of course, that I’m late.)
Perhaps going beardless reminds Colin of unhappy times? Perhaps Colin should consult the Hot Dog Guy next. 😉
Where’s Miranda?
@being baby-sat by Aunt Heather?
Honestly, I totally missed out on Miranda. She would have been really, REALLY easy to hide.
Let’s get down to business!
To prepare.. costumes.
Do they send me loafers, when I ask for shoes?
You’re the Shaggiest man I’ve ever met,
but you can bet before we’re though.
Mister I’ll make a Fred.. out of you!
(And roll the montage, starting with trying to teach Colin to tie an ascot. Terribly).
Cue applause.
Julio Scoundrél would be so proud.
Ok, now that that terrible parody is out of my head.
I believe it was Red Green who advised against shaving a long-worn beard.
Something to the effect of “It’s not a cocoon, you’re not a butterfly now. You’re just an old caterpillar.” and That part of your face has “become a lost world of of sags, bags, crags, wrinkles, crinkles, wattles and warts.”
Better they remember how you used to look without it before, than to see you without it now. Like something that’s been in a cave for most of its life. Now, luckily, Colin is still fairly youthful.
Valid. For evidence, I present Keanu Reeves. Everyone was all “Keanu is ageless!” Until he shaved the beard. Then everyone was like, “Oh, THAT’S where his age went.”
That’s fair.
@LaughingDemon
I’ve suggested to my Human Pet “Baldie” that he should grow a beard to cut a few years off his appearance.
But he replies his CPAP Mask would not seal nearly as well.
I guesss he is right.
Colin will be horrified to learn how much razors cost nowadays.
Well, as a guy with similar facial hair to Colin, I can safely note that he would still need to shave. You can’t sport a beard like his without doing some cheek and neck shaving to keep things looking neat. And I bet he is like me and still uses the Trac II razor he bought in 1995. It’s so old that you can only order new blades online from 3rd party suppliers. But nothing is cheaper. Beats dollar shave club by a mile.
MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE !
Merry Christmas, you festive cat you.
@EG
The weirder the Holy Day, the better I like it.
Some ancient, ignored God or Saint will take notice, and save me furry butt.
I do not miss the daily ritual of shaving at all. Now I just run the trimmer around twice a week, and we’re good so long as I remember to do it BEFORE showering; otherwise there’s always little sharp bits that stick inside the t-shirt.
I used to shave my head regularly, mostly because I’m too cheap to get a haircut as often as I should, but also because if my hair gets any longer than Colin’s, it gets messy and flyaway.
A big benefit of headshaving is the opportunity for Halloween costume: Mr. Clean with cotton-ball eyebrows, or paint my head and go as a bundle of balloons.
Then came the pandemic, the closing of my worksite and other requirements to meet people face to face. I started the journey to regrow the ponytail of my youth. Let us hope the crisis abates before I need to seek hairties.
Hey, at least you’ve still got your hair up top, Colin. I grew out the beard I could the moment I made the decision to shave my head instead of letting my receding hairline dictate my look. If I didn’t have MY beard, I’d look like a skinhead.
Hey, I finally found the Friendless Elf who the Yule Cat overpowered.
Sad – NOT !
He is partially obscured. But there.
That’s Hot Dog Guy behind the Candy Cane, right ?
I also found Daffy 🙁
Give us a hint on Tyler – please ?
Yes to hot dog guy. Tyler is … far to the left of the dial, as it were.
@EG
Found him !
Is that a Crowd Control Elf holding folk back, away from the angered Yule Cat ?
Also….
I cannot believe I forgot to suggest a MONKEY BEAR for this puzzle.
I thought of a monkey bear, and considered adding one. I also kinda felt bad that I didn’t include Hannah. But at one point, I just ran out of drawing energy. And time. I also ran out of time.
Just to make sure that I’m reading this right, but there are 20 of the “living lumps of coal”, as well as 20 of “Puck’s lost bows”?
Yes, there are 20 of each. Actually, there well may be MORE than 20 each. I ensured that 20 were visible of each to the best of my abilities and erred on the side of including more than less.