‘Powerpuff Girls’ dust holiday foes

It is an odd fact of the TV world that cartoons are often more clever -- and usually better to look at -- than much of what is made ostensibly for adults. They pander less to their audience; they more fully engage the senses: Music and sound effects are dramatic elements. And cartoons tend to be made by people who not only are nerdishly committed to the form but have a kind of competitive interest in outdoing their peers and predecessors, and this love and ambition shows on the screen.

This is certainly true of the phenomenon known as “The Powerpuff Girls.” If anyone still needs to be told, Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup are the superpowered progeny of Professor Utonium -- and by extension, of their real-life creator, Craig McCracken -- who concocted them from a mixture of sugar, spice, everything nice and the accidental addition of Chemical X.

“ ‘Twas the Fight Before Christmas,” their first very own holiday special (airing on Cartoon Network tonight but already available on DVD and VHS), finds them, like all little children who subscribe to the holiday, applying their particular talents to tree trimming and cookie baking, as the Professor struggles with the lights. “I can make three little girls from seasoning,” he wails, “but I can’t get the lights to work.”

The Mayor, Miss Bellum and Mojo Jojo, the big-brained monkey who is their best-loved nemesis, appear fleetingly, while narrator Tom Kenny moves the story along in the familiar cadences of Clement Moore: “ ‘Twas the city of Townsville ....” And off we go.

Of the several meanings of Christmas available to the holiday-special creator, the important one here is that it is a time of year when good children get presents, an event so necessary that a vast supernatural organization, headed by a fat man in a red suit and staffed by green-jacketed elves and flying reindeer, exists to make sure it happens. Stories that deal with plots to foil or hijack this system are therefore legion -- indeed, Santa is a continually imperiled saint.

But “The Fight Before Christmas” is a more original variant than most, as the peerlessly spoiled little Princess Morbucks contrives to sneak into Santa’s workshop -- a 20th century-modern sort of factory, with water coolers, bulletin boards, and Nog Cola machines in the kitchenette -- to switch the “nice” list with the “naughty” (a sticky note on which hers is the only name).

“You’d better change your ways or all you’re going to get from Santa is a big, fat lump of coal in your stocking,” Blossom tells Princess, who has several times in the past attempted to destroy the Powerpuff Girls in her wish to become one of them. In most holiday specials, such a warning would herald the coming reformation of the sinner, the melting of the cold, hard heart; love would pour like warm maple syrup over the wintry landscape. But this being a superheroine cartoon, set in a world where villains are not made to be reformed, only whomped, it is just a prelude to spectacular violence.

And this surely is the most violent Christmas cartoon ever made, though it is of course only cartoon violence, which, even at its most apocalyptic, doesn’t hurt anyone for long. These characters are as resilient as Christmas itself, whose signs and symbols may be twisted this way and that again and again, with no substantial harm being done to the holiday. Here, for instance, Santa is a kind of raucous redneck, whose speech is peppered with “ain’ts” and whose substantial gut -- curly white hairs surrounding a substantial navel -- hangs out over his belt. This is perfectly allowable.

The seasonal theme gives the animators and artists a new palette to play with, of wintry whites, blues, grays and violets, and lets them dress the girls in mufflers and wool hats and make havoc-y hay from giant snowballs and instant glaciers. The central set piece -- a race to the North Pole -- is a marvel of energy and pacing and design that shows just how much may be accomplished with a little.

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‘The Powerpuff Girls: ‘Twas the Fight Before Christmas’

Where: Cartoon Network

When: Premieres at 9 tonight

Rating: The network has rated the special TV-Y7-FV (Directed at older children, with an advisory for fantasy violence).

Catherine Cavadini...Blossom

Tara Strong...Bubbles/Nanny

E.G. Daily...Buttercup

Tom Kenny...Narrator/Elf #1/Little Boy

Creator, Craig McCracken. Writers, Lauren Faust, Craig Lewis