First Impressions: DC’s Creature Commandos
This is the first of James Gunn’s new DC Universe shows. Unless you count his James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad or James Gunn’s Peacemaker, regardless, this is the first project of his where he holds the keys to the kingdom.
The truth be said, Gunn usually does better with a co-writer suppressing his worst instincts. He doesn’t have one with Creature Commandoes.
Let’s get at it.
The logo is a rather promising start. It shows the OG comic book Superman with the triangle S wrapped in chains and then he breaks the chains smiling, the logo then spins around and shows the “DC bullet” logo that was used from 1976 to 2005. I approve, we use a variant of that at Arkhaven. Good start.
We open the series at Amanda Wallenr’s prison and we get an exposition dump that brings the show into canonical line with the rest of the Gunn-verse. It is brisk and efficient.
The Rick Flag that is now in command of Task Force X is Rick Flag Sr. He is the father of the Rick Flag who was killed in The Suicide Squad. DC nerds are already rushing to their keyboards to point out that Rick Flag Sr. led the WWII version of the Suicide Squad and that he’s dead. Well, now he isn’t.
We are introduced to this version of the Creature Commandos members. The Bride, Dr. Phosphorus, GI Robot, The Weasel, and Nina Mazurksy (Mermaid in the comics, I don’t know anything about her).
The Commandos are being sent to some fictional Eastern European country (Pokolistan) to prop up the incoming monarch Princess Ilana. She is under attack by long-time DC supervillain Circe, she’s been around since 1943 but she is usually one of Wonder Woman’s arch-enemies.
She’s leading an army of Red Pill Incels (here we go) who are trying to take over this country and then presumably they’ll go to Thermyscara to bang the Amazons? Anyway, they are Hollywood-friendly caricature versions of Incels. Mostly fat, stupid, and easily tricked. The women of the View would nod approvingly.
After meeting the Princess, the Commandos have a dinner with Ilana and her mother the queen, an ancient hag far gone in senile decay. “Who has not been herself for some time.”
I’ll put money on the Princess being the actual supervillain and Circe being the misunderstood secret heroine. The Queen is the real princess and young beautiful Ilana is her mother, great-grandmother, or something else.
Fine. It’s all fine.
We quickly get into the B-plot which being a James Gunn story means lots and lots of tragic backstories that eventually bind the team together.
In the first two episodes, it’s the Bride’s tragic backstory. Low-hanging fruit if you ask me. She heads off with Mermaid in tow to trudge around the ruins of the house she was “born” in. Frankenstein is having the place watched and someone reports it to him.
We then have a flashback where Frankenstein’s Monster quotes actual Frankenstein right before the bride is assembled. “Shall each man find a wife for his bosom, and each beast have his mate, and I be alone?” I don’t think I’ve ever seen that in Frankenstein story before.
(If I’m being brutally honest here Frankie you’re starting from a false premise. Plenty of men have to do without a wife for their bosoms and as for the beasts, it kind of depends on the beast but few mate for life.)
In fairness, Frankenstein having hopeless oneitis for the woman who was created just for him, and his Bride being repelled by him is pretty canonically correct.* Anyway this Frankenstien still isn’t taking no for an answer and stop for an order for about 200 years. Another Incel enemy I guess. This is why you always assign James Gunn a co-writer to keep his reflexes tamped down. The Creature kills Victor Frankenstein after he catches him banging the Bride. The Bride is definitely the feminist girl-boss of the team. But as tragic backstories go this one is kind of creepy. The Bride was a child with the body of an adult woman when Victor had sex with her. His motives were wrong but killing Victor was the right thing to do.
DC’s Frankenstein has been a member of the Creature Commandos off and on for some time but it looks like he’s going to be a Gamma-mooning supervillain incel in this iteration.
That gives you an overview of the series as is two episodes in.
Gunn faces a fundamental issue in creating an animated show. It will immediately be compared with two of the greatest animated series of all time. Max Fliescher’s Superman serial of the 1940s and Paul Dini’s Batman of the 1990s.
Gunn doesn’t have anywhere near the time or budget to match the artwork of the Superman serials, so he can’t create anything that beautiful.
The artwork isn’t as innovative as Batman but he has a chance to produce characters that are in the running but two episodes in and I’m not seeing it.
It has the usual James Gunn things like featuring obscure comic book characters with pretty sketchy canonical backgrounds that give him a great deal of narrative latitude. There is also gratuitous profanity plus there are some PG-13 cartoon sex scenes, meaning they didn’t draw nipples on the boobs. Shock humor that still manages to be funny. Body horror galore. And for all of its vulgarity some decently layered characters.
Creature Commandos has some potential but two episodes in I’m not having my socks knocked off like I was with The Penguin. I will have to see the whole thing before passing my final judgment.
*If you’ve never read the book. Victor tears apart the Bride’s body before vivifying her, relations with the Creature go downhill from there.
