Our story thus far (updated regularly)…

Chapter ONE (pages 01 through 35)

MAX is having a bad day, and the days can be long in Antarctica. The pariah-penguin’s secluded poetry-writing is ruined by the appearance of predators arguing over who gets to eat him or the dead penguin floating past. Max escapes, with the moment of inspiration lost, a nagging concern over colluding predators and that weird canister hanging off the corpse, and a spectacularly messy entrance into the Ice Bar where his friend ROSCOE awaits, all alcoholic charm and sober insouciance.

Max tries to break the news about the strangled penguin and deal-making whale and seal, but Roscoe won’t hear a word of it. He has more important things on his mind, like his next drink, and Max’s pinfeathers are standing in between them and PETE’s bartending services. Pete’s not interested. He just wants to see the back of the two birds. This slight is Max’s breaking point and he screams “This is all because of the incident with the fish!!“

That gets everyone’s attention like a squid with a starter’s pistol…

Chapter TWO (pages 36 through 68)

…and the only thing that keeps it from being pointed at Max’s head, is NED, the ice-bar’s drunkest patron, loudly pointing out  that the bar cod-tail stocks have run out and everyone runs the risk of going thirsty. Pandemonium ensues. The arrival of The Council, particularly the massive ELMO, bring quiet to the room, but not calm, until ESTELLE arrives astride the hulking albino BRUNO who chucks a warm meal of freshly-regurgitated sea critters for all to enjoy. When pressed as to the source of this spewed cornucopia, Estelle’s reply of “A little whale told me”, startles diminutive Council member ART and the resulting chain-reaction manages to draw the authorities attention to…Max. With Roscoe’s help, he makes a hasty exit.

The atmosphere isn’t any more welcoming outside the bar, where Max happens to stand on the spot of snow where a large albatross dropping would otherwise have landed. It’s a good look, just in time for the arrival of FIONA. While she and Roscoe trade banter at Max’s expense, Max wanders off in search of his poetry book. The canister reappears, bursting from the ice tied to a deep-sea fish. Without the deep-sea around, said fish explodes sending canister up, up, and down into the flippers of SALLY. With doe-eyed pleasure, she hands the canister to Max, only to have it knocked back into the ocean’s depths by the penguins stampeding from the Killer Whale munching his way through the beachside bar.

Chapter THREE (from page 69…)

Separated in the escape, Roscoe and Fiona end up on high ground, Sally stolen away by Bruno and Estelle, and Max drifts away with his beak stuck in a chunk of ice. Leagues of cold sea later, Max finally manages to puff out enough hot air to free his beak and look around his unfamiliar surroundings. One item is familiar – the canister, carried by a short penguin with a head of crazy feathers. Max follows this bird deep into an ice-berg, and starts to overhear an interesting conversation before someone brings a large fish down hard on the back of his head.