Captain Polo, climate action emissary extraordinaire

Captain Polo is the hero of this entertaining and educational series of graphic novels.

Polo is no ordinary polar bear: he walks upright, speaks human languages, uses cash and sails a boat! Starting out isolated from his Arctic home by melting sea ice, Captain Polo travels the world and witnesses the effects of climate change on multiple human societies and natural systems. Polo also learns of the many ingenious ways people in even the hardest of conditions are adapting to the changes in their environment, and of the many climate solutions that continue to emerge.

As a result of his travels, Captain Polo matures into a global emissary for climate education and action, and is often the voice of the downtrodden, marginal societies that are most affected by a warming planet on a day to day basis.

Penguin, the smart side kick

Penguin’s main ambition is to somehow get back home to the Antarctic. At the end of Book 3 in the series, Captain Polo rescues Penguin from London Zoo when he makes his own get away. Set on returning north to Arctic home, Polo convinces Penguin to come along and ‘get used to it’.

However, the north and south poles are actually very different, and Penguin never did get used to it, as the reader will find out in Pole to Pole, the fourth book in the series.

Although mute, Penguin is clever and resourceful, and is not above using subterfuge and deceit to get his own way.

Conor 'O Connor, the bumbling villain

Conor the fishing captain can’t live without a certain cap, a treasured legacy from his grandfather. Readers who have not read the first book in the series should know that the cap Conor is so obsessed about is none other than the one sitting on Polo’s head. Polo took possession of this cap by pure chance (see Book 1).

Convinced that the cap was stolen from him by ‘a savage beast’, Conor will go to any lengths to get it back, sometimes employing outrageous ploys (that usually always backfire).

Conor is the bumbling villain we all love to see failing to get what he wants, and in this sense his character is inspired by the likes of Wile E. Coyote and Samity Sam from Looney Tunes cartoons.

Tex Greedyman, the arch villain

Tex Greedyman is the caricature of the James Bond villain - filthy rich, utterly despicable, slightly mad, ruthless, easily excited, obsessed with power and entirely predictable. A Havanna cigar and a scotch on the rocks are never out of Tex's reach as he conducts his dirty business aboard his multi-billionaire yacht.

In the context of the subject of the book Tex first appears in - Pole to Pole, the fourth in the series - Tex the oil man represents the increasingly dangerous effects of fossil fuels in a warming world in which life on Earth is threatened by climate change.