PABLO AND SPLASH

Penguin playmates Pablo and Splash tackle a literally mammoth challenge after an obstreperous time machine strands their mad scientist friend, Professor O’Brain, back in the ice age.

Excitable Splash has a predictable reaction to the news that the light-skinned, pink-haired professor needs rescuing from Northern Europe 68,000 years in the past: “ROAD TRIP!!!!” Her timorous companion, recalling what happened the last time they climbed aboard the touchy, talking TimeBender, has an entirely different—and, as things turn out, all-too-prescient—take: “Great.” Still, there’s nothing for it but to mount a rescue, which leads to nerve-wracking encounters with a saber-toothed tiger, a herd of woolly mammoths, and a befuddled, brown-skinned Neanderthal (or, as Splash puts it, “Nanderfall”) hunter who’s briefly dumped into the modern world. Not to mention a momentous, if hilariously unlikely, discovery involving live earthworms and space-time-spanning wormholes. “OH MY COD,” as Splash is wont to exclaim at these misadventures. Chortling readers may well have the same reaction, since in Dempsey’s brightly colored and simply drawn panels, the wandering waddlers zigzag through time and space from prehistory to the Old West and finally back to their Antarctic flock, where for some reason, the tale of their adventures is met with skepticism! Go figure.

Further lively antics from a pair of comical penguins.