Ah Dave Stone. Now there's a mad writer. His style is densely intertextual and wordy, a tentacular morass of camp and ideas crammed into a book so tight the lid has to be nailed shut. It's a good bet that with none of his work – and his 1990s stuff in particular – are you going to get or understand everything on the first run through, but if you hold on you'll enjoy what you see.

His influences are admirably meretricious – the title story of this collection owes equal amounts to Dante Alighieri and Stanley Unwin – and despite the madness of it all there's no denying it works.

There's a perceptible jump in the middle of this collection, as we go from the original 1990s run of Armitage strips (all cyberpunk, leather jackets and Sonic the Hedgehog haircuts) to the 00s revival (suddenly the jokes are about I'm a Celebrity, Starbucks and the smoking ban).

Things are much more sedate this side of the Millennium; less mad, less ambitious perhaps, but also much more easily enjoyable. Armitage finds its place as the more domestic, grounded cousin of the Judge Dredd strips. It's a fair representation of how Britain (when it's not going full Empire 2.0) views its relationship with the States: we're not going to change the world, we're not as big, but we're also less likely to shoot you in the face.

Also, I really like Inspector Morse. ( )