THORFINN THE NICEST VIKING AND THE TERRIBLE TREASURE

Being some of the exploits of Thorfinn the Very-Very-Nice-Indeed.

Being clever as well as unfailingly polite, Thorfinn—youngest son of Harald the Skull-Splitter and best friends with axe-wielding Velda the, er, girl—not only recovers a stolen treasure (which he then donates to the Mangy Elks Protection League), but saves his village and all of Norway from an unscrupulous Viking chief. Morgan’s loosely drawn ink-and-wash cartoons add appropriately comical notes, as does the dialogue (“Oh, don’t be such a drama queen,” sighs the bad guy to the apoplectic Harald) and occasional outsized belch. In the co-published Thorfinn the Nicest Viking and the Raging Raiders, the mannerly marauder leads an expedition to “rescue” his mother from an Icelandic spa while getting to the bottom, as it were, of a shocking atrocity: “What kind of sick, twisted person would burn another Viking’s underpants!?” Readers may want to know, too. Each adventure closes with a game or puzzle or some bits of Viking lore, plus a sheet of detachable trading cards. Unsurprisingly, the characters all appear to be white.

Brains trump brawn every time—at least for this horn-helmed peacemaker.