Despite the somewhat questionable title of "Wolverine And The X-men", the new Marvel cartoon - featuring... well, the X-men (oh and Wolverine!) is actually rather good. The animation is slick and smooth... and it's really a cut above the rather insipid animation we've been seeing in the West for many years.

The story starts a year after Professor X and Jean Gray disappear and the X-men have pretty much disbanded. Wolverine is pretty much riding around, doing his loner thing. As one might guess, events lead him to realise that Xavier or no - the world needs the X-men.

Thus far we've had a good mix of foreshadowing, action, various mutant cameos - Boom Boom, Pyro, Colossus, Night Crawler and Dust just in the first episode. So, it certainly seems to have been worth the wait... and certainly far superior to the rather embarrassing X-men Evolution... Of course, where that show went wrong was that it made almost the entire cast about 14, except for Wolverine and the Professor... It seems that a more mature class (it's mentioned Bobby Drake is over 18) has thankfully prevailed this time.

It's clear that the series is building to the ever popular concept of X-dom, that of a conflict between mutants and humans... interestingly, although the title sequence includes Wolverine et al taking on a classic Sentinel, currently the anti-mutant forces are just guys with guns... although, the second episode introduces a scorpion like Sentinel prototype. One has to ask who thought that purple and pink would strike fear into the hearts of mutants...

Regardless, we've got plenty of elements at play here. We've got Rogue joining the Brotherhood, the lingering questions over the disappearance of Xavier and Jean... the still mostly disbanded X-men, the clearly oncoming war against the anti-mutant forces of the MRD and so on... there's just an awful lot that has been touched upon in just two episodes... but despite the fact they've introduced these elements - one doesn't feel overwhelmed, merely that things are building... some more quickly than others.

Definitely a show worth watching for any who had lost faith in Marvel cartoons, or just Western animation in general.