DCSU Watch: "Creature Commandos" on Max

So I have a new TV girlfriend.  

I can fix her...!

No, but really.  I can't begin to wrap my head around the fact that this is how James Gunn's DC Studios Universe is starting.  Wildly violent, gross, Rated-R just for language, full of nudity, sex and swearing...  My suspicion is that he pitched this to WB during his problems with Marvel/ Ike Perlmutter.  Maybe he pitched this alongside Peacemaker and they said "well, that sounds like $30 million an episode or 250 million as a movie.  But as a TV show cartoon...".

Honestly, I don't care. But, in theory, Creature Commandos does *count* as part of the new shared DCSU.  Which is wild, because this thing is Rated a hard R, is grotesque, violent, morbid and hilarious.  And, because it's Gunn, and he understands monsters - it's also oddly moving.  

Back in comics land, the original Creature Commandos only had a handful of appearances and are used as an exemplar of the sorts of things comics scribe Robert Kanigher would somehow cook-up.  And in the original formula, it was a Dracula, Frankenstein, Wolf Man and a Medusa led by a normal sergeant and fighting Nazis in WWII - in comics released in the early 1980's.

What we get in Max's offering - a trim 7 episodes - is a hodge-podge of that concept, a heavy dose of Morrison's take on Frankenstein and The Bride, as well as Frankenstein and the Agents of SHADE (a comic I read and have no memory of here in 2024), and various other DC properties.  Like - hey, neat.  It's GI Robot!  What next, Rex the Wonder Dog?*

In some ways, this follows much of the formula we've come to know from Guardians of the Galaxy, Suicide Squad and Peacemaker.  A ragtag group of miscreants comes together, learns from each other while achieving a specific task, some of them get killed, and all of them have baggage that explains why they are the way they are - usually some form of trauma.  We may see it in flashback or described or that trauma makes itself known in the present.  

And, this being a team of monsters/ non-humans, Gunn certainly knows some people are just born that bad, some are made, and we're all battered about by our own baggage and nature as much as external forces.  And that innocence is so often the price we pay - so maybe we should covet and protect genuine goodness.  It's a tragedy when its sacrificed.

Futzing with a post-Snyderverse continuity, the Suicide Squad led by Amanda Waller (who is also in Peacemaker) has been de-commissioned and Waller is told not to use human prisoners anymore.  So... she finds a work around by recruiting those not deemed "human".

Here, we have The Bride (Indira Varma) - an alt-reality version wherein Dr. Frankenstein did finish the Bride project for his creation - here called Erik (David Harbour).  The Weasel (Sean Gunn), a curious take on The Innocent, returns from Suicide Squad as a delightfully animated maniac.  Dr. Phosphorous (Alan Tudyk), a character I found genuinely frightening in early Batman reading, is lumped in.  Nina (Zoe Chao) is our Creature from the Black Lagoon stand-in - who may be weird looking but is ridiculously normal.  GI Robot appears - a mechanical man built with programming to do one thing - kill Nazis, which has left him singularly minded and unfulfilled since 1945.  And, they're led by Rick Flag, Sr - voiced by underutilized actor Frank Grillo.

The plot is that they're sent into DC's made-up post-Soviet block country, Pokolistan to protect the royal family from an assault by DC's classic villain, Circe, who has recruited a bunch of Incels to attack the small country.  But, things get twisty as we go along.

The plot is fairly thin, because this is really about characters, and James Gunn just having the time of his life writing *monsters* in the classic Universal Monsters sense.  They aren't us, but they're relatable in some way, cursed, brought into being against their will and with expectations foisted upon them.  At the center of each story is a seething violence toward the characters, often out of fear of others.  And, ironically, the most violent of the monsters is acting entirely out of misplaced feelings of love.

The show also jumps around in history and across DC.  So, if you expected me to see Batman and Sgt. Rock show up in this show - no, I did not.  But here we are.  But it's also starting the DCSU by saying "look at this box of toys we've got!  Why just play with the Justice League?  This place is nuts!"  Because it is, and the more you figure that out, the more you might grow to love it.  Rather than squishing down concepts or throwing fans a bone suggesting some of the goofy stuff, we're leaning into it hard.

In general, I have no notes.  I love the oddball corners of the DCU, the mixing of genres and ideas you got from folks like Kanigher or Morrison or anyone with a deadline who needed pages or who saw concepts form with their third eye whilst astrally projecting.  And... Gunn clearly gets it.  He got it with Guardians of the Galaxy, and he's already thrown quite the team around Superman in the upcoming film.  But this is the stuff I would happily drop a few bucks on every month at Austin Books.  And - I do not say this lightly - I think DC's weird stuff coming from an organic approach is always better than Marvel's, minus, say... Howard the Duck.  

It does seem there will be another season of the show, so it may be worth watching before that comes on in a year or two.  

I haven't been a fan of DC Animation for a long time - since Flashpoint, really.  But here, someone seems to have had the right idea, and with Gunn's writing underpinning everything, it's some of the best in a couple of decades.  

That this and Peacemaker will coexist with Superman and Green Lantern is kind of mind-boggling.  We may be getting a DCSU that actually resembles the experience of being a DC fan.  

Anyhoo... give it a shot.  

*do it, James Gunn...  you know you want to.  The DC Universe is a weird, wacky place.