Heroes come back home

With comic book heroes duking it out in the cineplex, it was only a matter of time before they started coming back to where they belong -- television. More specifically, children’s television.

Oh, I know Iron Man and Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk are all actually culturally significant metaphors for the eternal battle of the ego and the id, or the natural world and the industrial, or the spiritual and the physical. And I know we don’t call them comic books anymore, we call them graphic novels. Comic-Con is bigger than Cannes. Whatever.

The point is that “Wolverine and the X-Men” premieres on Nickelodeon tonight at 8 and it’s good to see a cartoon that remembers what cartoons are supposed to do. Zap, slime and blow things up. It’s almost heartwarming to see feature characters who speak in short declarative sentences that you can usually predict two beats beforehand, and who generally save the world.

Unlike most cartoons on today, “Wolverine and the X-Men” does not involve children, which means that the annoying smart-mouth answers are kept to a bare minimum. Likewise, there are no talking animals (well, unless you count the more fauna-esque mutants), very little sarcasm and virtually no highfalutin dissection of pop culture. The term “crabby patty” is never uttered.

Instead, it is an old-fashioned animated action series that follows the adventures of, obviously, the marvelous Marvel character Wolverine and all the various mutants we have come to love and loathe through the X-Men comic books and the three feature films that star them. “Wolverine and the X-Men” seems to be a reworking of events that occurred in the third film, “X-Men: The Last Stand.”

After a confusing sequence of opening scenes, we find that “now” is a year after a devastating explosion at Xavier Institute. Professor Xavier and Jean Grey have disappeared in the explosion, the X-men have been flung to the four winds and the world has again turned against all mutants, forcing them to register, arresting them and generally treating them like whatever oppressed group of which you believe they are symbolic. When Wolverine saves a young girl from a flaming train wreck, the crowd’s reaction is to arrest him.

Meanwhile, a group of more evil-minded mutants are protesting their treatment through much more violent means, intent on bringing the situation to full-blown war.

So you see where things stand. Wolverine must gather the X-Men once again, figure out what happened to Professor X and Jean, defeat the bad mutants and convince the world that it is OK to be different. Even if different means having 3-feet-long retractable metal claws.

There’s no better scenario for a cartoon hero, especially one as beset and complex as Wolverine and though live-action CG is terrific, it’s hard to beat traditional animation for a really good slam-bam, metal-flying, fireball-throwing superhero battle. Not to mention the limitless mutant possibilities.

Now, if it were only on Saturday morning. But even in this brave new world, we can’t have everything.

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mary.mcnamara@latimes.com

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‘Wolverine and the X-Men’

Where: Nickelodeon

When: 8 tonight

Rating: TV-Y (suitable for young children)