Johanan Prime

The lights go down. A white cloth screen glows at the front of the room. Stars appear on it, projected, cold and endless. Then a ship comes into frame, running, and behind it, something menacing closes in. You know this scene. You’ve seen it on cinema screens, on laptops, and on TVs in living rooms. But you haven’t seen it quite like this.

About a third of the way into our conversation, Yvonne Chapman pauses, laughs, and admits something that sticks with us for the rest of the interview. Yes, she’s still looking for her old “Sailor Moon” card collection. Somewhere on this planet, there are over a thousand of them gathered in a box, having been assembled one quarter at a time from card-dispensing machines in Calgary’s Chinatown.

When “X-Men ’97” wrapped its first season with one of the most emotionally devastating finales in recent animated memory, the question wasn’t whether a second season could be good. It was whether it could be this good again. Four episodes in, we have our answer, and it comes in the form of a villain who has been waiting, quite literally, since the dawn of civilisation. Season 2 picks up immediately where we left off. The X-Men are fractured and flung across time.