One thing that I appreciate about comic books is their potential to be different. I know that if I pick up a chapter of “Spider-Man,” it’ll have some standard superhero tales, and if I’m not in the mood for that, I can look towards “The Nice House on the Lake” or “Ice Cream Man” for something a little darker and more cerebral. Comedy? Archie Comics. Teen drama? Also Archie Comics. It’s not the best example, but my point is that comics contain multitudes of stories and styles.
With HBO Max’s new animated series “Creature Commandos,” writer and creator James Gunn demonstrates that he not only understands how to emphasize these differences in comic book projects, but that he can craft stories under a variety of different tones within one show.
Gunn, director of this summer’s “Superman” and co-CEO of the new DC Studios, is no stranger to superheroes. His most popular, and most acclaimed, work is Marvel Studios’ reimagination of “The Guardians of the Galaxy,” and from there he started his stint with the distinguished competition at Warner Brothers’ now-defunct DC Films division, writing the 2020 reboot of “The Suicide Squad” and its spin-off “Peacemaker.”
With each of these projects, Gunn crafted a very unique product despite the fact that all of them share comic book starting points. Both “Guardians” and “Suicide Squad” are stories of misfit criminal gangs having to serve the greater good, but the ethos behind them vary greatly. While “Guardians” is about outlaws who ultimately have hearts of gold, Gunn’s “Suicide Squad” is a darker tale filled with betrayal and heroes with less-than-clear moral alignments, which he built off of for “Peacemaker.”
The latter is the tone his new animated project leans into — logically, I should add, considering that “Commandos” itself is a continuation of the storyline from “Suicide Squad” and “Peacemaker” — with the characters being motivated by their own twisted drives and desires, even if the end result is “the right thing” by conventional standards.
“Commandos” features an all-star cast (with the actors expected to return as live-action iterations of these characters in future projects). While the conventional protagonist would be Frank Grillo’s Rick Flag Sr., the show’s beating heart is the relationship between the undead Bride (Indira Varma) and Nina Mazursky (Zoe Chao), whose mix of willingness to cross the line for the mission and avoidance of excessive violence is emphasized as this dynamic allows for friendship to grow, not grow tense.
That’s not to say these are the only characters worth paying attention to in the project though. The show dedicates time to each of the titular creatures (and some outside of the government squad too), demonstrating that beneath each “monster” lies a narrative that twisted them to fit that role. It’s hard to pick a favorite among the three other squad members. The amiable G.I. Robot’s backstory in “Cheers for the Tin Man” gives humanity to the least human of the monsters; “Chasing Squirrels” adds depth to Weasel, a joke character from “Suicide Squad” and turned him into the most undeniably tragic character of the group (both Weasel and Robot are played by Sean Gunn); lastly, “Priyatel Skelet” allows Alan Tudyk to show off his full vocal acting range as the mean, green Dr. Phosphorus and offers us a fun yet brutal glimpse of this universe’s criminal underworld.
All of these characters have their own tragic stories, and Gunn masterfully weaves them throughout the season and the narrative’s ongoing action. While I greatly enjoyed the show, and encourage you to do the same, my biggest complaint about this debut season is that it could have benefitted from one more episode to let its final backstory breathe on its own, unencumbered by the parallel plot. With another season confirmed to be in development, maybe that’ll be different next time. Whatever the case is, “Creature Commandos” is a heartfelt, brutal, often crude but ultimately lovable show, about heartfelt, brutal and often crude but ultimately lovable people.
