2000 AD: The Ultimate Collection #129. Originally serialised in 2000 AD Progs 1824-1835, 1900-1911, 2200-2205 & 2207-2210.

It’s March 2013. Well this wasn’t a series I expected to see again! While you should never take a “death” in comics to heart, the end of the first Stickleback collection did feel like a nice button on the Pope of Crime’s adventures. Now thanks to the extended run of The Ultimate Collection, it’s time to check out Stickleback’s life after death.

I really enjoyed the first Volume, a fun mashup by Ian Edginton of Victorian London tropes, detective stories, and the wildly supernatural, brought to vivid black and white life by D’Israeli. These final (so far) three tales in the Stickleback series keep a lot of the great stuff from those earlier stories, while most definitely kicking things into a different gear and going for a much stronger emphasis on the supernatural.

But Edginton also does a great job of tying it up in character growth, most particular for Stickleback himself but also for new partner in crime and world-saving Miss Scarlett. Edginton has a light touch with the character work, using the limited page space in the Prog to provide some standout moments that help us enjoy the over-the-top heroes and villains as they run around this gaudy and melodramatic world (these are all compliments, by the way!). There’s some sudden revelations about Stickleback’s past and true identity that is both wonderful madness from Edginton, whilst also giving some surprisingly powerful emotional stakes in the final story.

2000 AD has no shortage of unknowable extradimensional entities wreaking havoc on our world, but even if the notes are familiar they are wonderfully played and remixed by Edginton and D’Israeli. There’s a confidence and sense of fun that runs through everything, even during the darker moments (of which there are a few). It feels like Lovecraftian horrors from beyond the void have cropped up quite a lot in the recent run of the post, but I’m far more engaged with the character-based shenanigans to worry too much about the details of this particular unknowable horror.

Number of the Beast (2013) effectively resets the series, with a time-jump to five years after Stickleback’s “death” and a very changed London. His crime empire is gone, humanoid lizards are a servant class, and he’s now reliant to some extent on Dr Orlando Doyle from the Brotherhood of the Book. It’s a bit of a jarring shift, but it’s been quite a while since I’d read the first collection so I was able to just go with it. The story starts off as what seems like a fairly straightforward investigation, but pretty quickly sets up a lot of the more epic drama of the next two tales. (Massive shoutout as a Doctor Who fan for the Zarbi, Menoptera, and Wirrn on display in Orlando Doyle’s base!)

Things kick into the next gear with The Thru’penny Opera (2014), as the truly demonic scale of the threat to London takes shape. D’Israeli really gets to shine here, as the City of London itself is warped into a demonic signal and gods walk through the streets taking on Stickleback and his gang of society’s rejects. Operatic is a good description for the turn the series takes in the story, as the world-shaking events collide with Stickleback’s love, his son, and his own past identity. It’s a mad and bold twist that I’m sure can have many a hole poked in it, but I love the confidence of it all.

It’s then quite a gap in terms of publication time before we get to New Jerusalem (2020), which continues the story and sees Sticklebackhave to come to terms with his past and his future to save London. Edginton builds it all to a crescendo, bringing back characters from earlier series and giving us a classic “against the odds” battle against the end of the world. D’Israeli flings everything at it, and balances the character moments with incredible scenes of mayhem and action.

Overall across the three series, there’s a real feel of a major expansion of worldbuilding and storytelling while the character work becomes more intricate. A lot of the undercurrent of the wild and humourous action-adventure is Stickleback becoming a new person based on all the different facets of himself. But really, Edginton and D’Israeli are here to have huge amounts of fun with the setting and characters – the extra layers and thoughtful details are just icing on the cake. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for the return of the Pope of Crime in the Prog’s pages!

Next time: The ill-fated Tornado makes its debut in the Ultimate Collection as we look at Black Hawk: The Intergalactic Gladiator!