In the darkest shadows of Victorian London, it's always possible to imagine a netherworld lurking in the stinking sewers and mist-encrusted streets. There's realms where Mr Hyde, Fu Manchu and Jack the Ripper lurk. Stickleback is infused with the atmosphere of these villains as well as the works of Dickens, Jules Verne and other gothic novels. You can almost taste the grime and the faint whiff of sulphur.

In comics, whilst heroes fight for justice , their opponents can be their equals in wit and guile. In some instances, those villains become more compelling and they are dangerous enough to draw you to the darkside. Look at how the Joker dominates Batman or Green Goblin battles Spidey. In British comics, many anti-heroes have been given their own strip - The Spider, Black Max, even Judge Death and Nemesis the Warlock. And that's not listing other morally ambiguous characters such as The Punisher or John Constantine or Italy's own Diabolik. Ian Edginton not only wallows in the 19th Century culture, he positively digests it to create his own warped view of London, complete with demons and zombies, riddled with spiders and secret societies.

The two tales in this volume introduce the master of demons, the self-styled Pope of Crime, Stickleback, a wizened, hunched-up being with a protruding spine. He's surrounded by freaks, outlawed from respectable society, acting as a kind of demonic Fagin. He's deemed a criminal to some but an invaluable ally to the police in their shadier investigations. He can be relied upon to do their dirty work whether retrieving one of Queen Victoria's crown jewels which hold a demonic secret ('England's Glory') or a corrupt police chief indulging in human sacrifice to ancient gods ('Mother London'). His mysterious origins remain tantalizingly vague and there’s more to him than meets the eye.

However, Edginton takes similar delight that Alan Moore does in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by plundering through Victorian social, cultural and literary history and blending all the elements into a darkly delicious fantasy world. This is the twisted crossroads where fact and fiction meet so Stickleback's army of grotesques and carnival freaks walks in the shadows alongside Queen Victoria and Buffalo Bill , who is not who he seems!

Eagle-Award winning artist D'Israeli ia an appropriate accomplice considering his own Victorian-sounding name, and he launches himself into this twilight world with relish. Fully rounded figures and unearthly creatures wrought out of the black and white inks, graded into almost darkly sculpted forms that seem part obscured by the Capital's fog-shrouded, smoke-smothered streets and in part lit by the otherworldy glow from Hellfire. Stickleback is a deliciously original blend of crime and supernatural. Maybe you could be worshipping the Pope of Crime by the end.