The Powerpuff Girls was created by Craig McCracken out of a student film, and it looks like nothing else from the era - flat colours, thick outlines, and a graphic mid-century style that made the violence funnier by contrast.

The premise is sugar, spice, everything nice and an accidental dose of Chemical X, which produced three kindergarteners with superpowers. Professor Utonium raises them as a single father, and the show is quietly serious about that even while a monkey is destroying the city.

The three-way personality split is textbook and effective: Blossom leads and over-explains, Bubbles is sweet until she isn't, and Buttercup solves problems by hitting them. Every plot is generated by them disagreeing on approach.

Mojo Jojo's habit of restating everything he has just said in slightly different words is one of the great villain speech patterns in animation.

This collection covers Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup.