‘Creature Commandos’ Feels Fresh, Somehow

Given the absolute glut of comic-book material on our screens from the last decade, it seemed unlikely that James Gunn‘s ‘Creature Commandos’, now airing on Max, could feel like anything better than a placeholder or a retread. But it’s some of the most enjoyable superhero (or superhero-adjacent) content in years. This is a hard-R adult animated show. The episodes are super-gory and loaded with horny sex and double entendres. But they pack a lot of humor, plot, and character work into fewer than 30 minutes. There’s no time to bog down in excessive exposition. Creature Commandos is a success on pretty much every level.

Though Gunn only took over the reins of DC in the last year, Creature Commandos is a continuation of the work he did, well, commando, before they handed him the franchise. The show features several characters from his Suicide Squad live-action reboot, most notably the insane, sniveling hard-to-kill Weasel, a half-human, half animal whose origin story Gunn has yet to tease out.

The premise of this show is similar to Suicide Squad. A shadowy U.S. government agency deploys a team of imprisoned misfits to a foreign country on an unclear mission. In this case, though, they’ve put together a team “monsters.” You have a fish-woman, a radioactive skull man, a killer robot left over from World War 2, the Weasel, and the literal Bride of Frankenstein. Every one has an antihero backstory and kicks ass in different bloody ways. The structure doesn’t differ from Suicide Squad or from Peacemaker, Gunn’s live-action DC Max show, but the animation means more gore, more quips, more narrative tricks, more everything, but somehow done in less time.

All the voice work is excellent, especially Indira Varma as the “Bride”, Sean Gunn, who is hilarious and kind of moving as G.I. Robot, and the masterful Alan Tudyk, who plays the mysterious Dr. Phosporous. It’s a deep enough bench that Viola Davis and David Harbour are playing supporting characters. Anya Chalotra, best knowns Yennfer of Vengenburg in The Witcher, is the voice of the show’s putative villain, the witch Circe, known to comics fans as an antagonist to Wonder Woman. That was the nerdiest sentence I’ve ever typed. But Creature Commandos is a kind of nerd factory, an early document in what I’m guessing will be an extreme comic-book arms race between DC and Marvel in the years to come.

You hear a lot of talk about how the superhero genre is dying out, but I think it’s only at halftime of its cinematic dominance. The DC Cinematic Universe has been so bad, for so long. It has bumbled or completely misplayed so many storylines and characters, leaving a ton of material on the table. James Gunn is clearly a fan of the comics, and the characters, so it looks like he’s finally going to give us animated shows that feel like comic books, and live-action movies that feel like animated shows.

Creature Commandos has the vibe of Justice League Unlimited or the early seasons of Young Justice, but for adults. And for those of us aged DC fans who’ve endured crap like Black Adam or The Flash or Shazam: Fury of the Gods in theaters, Creature Commandos is a sign, like the S on the front of Superman’s costume, of hope.