Theseus Monster Killer; Odysseus Super Hero; Odysseus Goes Through Hell

The pace and humour which characterise Tony Robinson's earlier forays into historical folklore (most notably in the Maid Marian books) are here applied to the epic barbarities of Greek Mythology. Covering the labours of Theseus, the struggle with the Minotaur, the voyage to Tartarus, the Trojan War, and the wanderings of Odysseus, Robinson and Curtis (of Black Adder fame) stick pretty closely to the classic storylines laid out by earlier chroniclers of Theseus and Odysseus. Only minor atrocities, such as the former's desertion of Ariadne after her assistance in the labyrinth, or the latter's mass hanging of Penelope's maids after the return to Ithaca, are omitted or mollified. Otherwise, we get the full menu of slaughter and pillage, spiced with the same kind of brutal humour and cpmtradoctory hand-wringing at war's futility that you would find in Homer himself (or herselves?).

Splashed with brash graphics and racy allusions to contemporary culture, these books might provide a more alluring introduction to the classical imagination than more restrained, and thus less authentic, versions.