X-Men The Animated Series Season 4 - Volume 2   Starring (voice): Cedric Smith, Cathal J. Dodd, Norm Spencer and Iona Morris Clear Vision RRP: £14.99 MAR1022 Certificate: PG Available 09 November 2009

Professor Xavier, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Wolverine, Beast, and a bunch of other mutants return ("In Stereo!" no less!) for eight 20-minute episodes (amounting to a running time of 2 hours 44 minutes) which make up the final batch for Season 4 of this animated adventure...

In Weapon X, Lies and Video Tape, Wolverine, Sabretooth and Silver Fox are obliged to endure enforced memories of their creation and subsequent escape, in order to trap them again. In Lotus and the Steel, Wolverine goes to Japan to find himself... and finds himself defending villagers from attack. Love in Vain, has bug creatures take over the X-Men and try to incorporate them into their colony. In Have Yourself a Morlock Little X-Mas, Wolverine and Jubilee make great sacrifices at Christmas to help the Morlocks (yes, they did avoid being grabbed by the Morlocks!). In Beyond Good and Evil (a 4-part story), Apocalypse kidnaps prominent X-Men through time using a stolen time travel device. He plans to unbalance time and create a new universe to his liking.

As I've said before, I'm not a fan of this series because it fails miserably to live-up to its companion animation from the 1990s, Spider-Man. The episodes are watchable, but inspire little more interest than that. Beyond Good and Evil attempts to be far too clever; the story is so involved that it falls over itself, the result being that it simply reduces itself to pointless whizzes and bangs. Lots of fire power and very little plot. The stand-alone episodes work better, but even then Lotus and the Steel is plagued by flashbacks to previous episodes. One thing this series has got right is placing Wolverine pretty much centre stage. After all, he is the X-Men's most popular character.

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Ty Power