Ro-Jaws Book Review

[JohnW]

Portrayals of Ro-Jaws have leaned too heavily on the scatological. Has it been forgotten that the sewer-droid was once a literary critic of no small insight?
Look at these from the 1981 Sci-Fi Special.



I sold the Dredd annual years ago along with the rest of my collection, and The World Atlas of Mysteries I must have given away to a nephew or niece back when I judged them of an age to best appreciate it. However, in a fit of nostalgia, I reacquired the Atlas yesterday (for less than a tenner including p&p!).
Ro-Jaws was right on the money. This thing is quality, and largely free of bullshit. It's written in that learned but accessible style we don't see too much of these days, flavoured with just the right amount of 1970s open-mindedness to the rum and uncanny. There's occasional credulousness over since-debunked gurus and manipulators of 'ancient earth energies', but at the same time the author doesn't hesitate to sink a charlatan like Erich von Däniken.
And it's got all the UFOs and Loch Ness Monsters and ley lines you could ever wish for. This may well have been the book that kept me from teenage delinquency.

And the 1982 Dredd annual? I first read it on Christmas Day 1981, the day after the Apocalypse War broke out. No wonder I'm still reading Judge Dredd.
There are three full-colour strips by McMahon.
Three! Full-colour strips! By McMahon!
1981-vintage McMahon!
Need I say more?

Nine out ten for both of these, without a doubt.
Ro-Jaws deducts one point from the Annual because it lacks a Ro-Jaws story. I'm deducting one for the poor binding.
I'm deducting a point from the Atlas because it carelessly retails the assumption that the Templars were involved in some pretty esoteric occult stuff. Speaking as someone who's spent a dozen years studying and teaching the Crusades, I can clarify on that:
No they weren't.

[Dark Jimbo]

I've not read either book, but does anyone else really miss* the use of Ro-Jaws and Hammerstein as a sort of occassional Greek Chorus in the prog? One of the all-time great double acts.




*I mean, I say 'miss' - I wasn't actually alive when this Sci-fi Special came out!

[Tjm86]

... whereas half the forum inhabitants were alive during the late palaeolithic era ...