A young girl blows up an abortion centre – and miraculously survives.

The second batch of adaptations by Dirk Maggs of Joe Harris’ IDW Season 10 of the X-Files kicks off with this version of issues 16 and 17, a very different sort of case to those that featured in the first set. There’s no black oil, Cigarette Smoking Man or Lone Gunmen to contend with: this is the sort of spooky X-File that turned up in the early days of the show more regularly, and featured more heavily in the X-Files’ accompanying series, Millennium.

Those familiar with the comics will notice there’s a reference in the audio to Millennium’s lead character, Frank Black, but unlike in the original, he doesn’t make an appearance – the substance of the discussions between him and Mulder are transferred to he and Scully – but otherwise Maggs follows Harris’ script closely, providing suitably creepy audio versions of some visual moments. It’s a dark tale, with overtones of paedophilia on top of the supernatural, with both David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson gripping in key scenes

Verdict: A strong starter to this new collection. 9/10

Paul Simpson