Season Review: Creature Commandos Season One

There are a lot of people out there that give David Zaslav a lot of guff but really DC Comics and Animation has been a mess ever since Chris Nolan left the scene having already submitted a trio of billion dollar Batman classics. DC Animation has been a bit better over the years but not by much. While the animated films have been mostly spot-on adaptations of comic source material, that doesn’t mean that DC Animation didn’t have a habit of straying with a most recent example being Prime Video’s Batman: Caped Crusader. While at first I was a bit miffed that MAX would even cancel the series to begin with, changing the Penguin and then seeing what DC ended up doing with the iconic character in live-action just a few months ago, I get it. There are new sheriffs in town and they have a vision. .

Clearly, James Gunn and Peter Safran are manning a new ship altogether here and that’s put on notice with James Gunn’s animated adaptation of Creature Commandos. In what’s to be seen as part of the first entry of James’ creative vision for DC Studios entitled “Chapter One: Gods and Monsters”, Creature Commandos helps tear down the mistakes of the disorderly chaos that was the previous DC Studios administration and instead saves the disorderly chaos for what’s on screen.

Taking place following the events of The Suicide Squad and The Peacemaker, Creature Commandos follows a very similar starting point with Amanda Waller (Viola Davis reprises her role from the aforementioned live-action films) needing to put together yet another team to go on a death-defying mission. Problem is, following the events from The Peacemaker and The Suicide Squad, she’s not allowed to use incarcerated humans as part of any teams. Therefore, she tasks Rick Flagg Sr.(voiced by Frank Grillo), with a new team that she has put together to take on another mission, this one with various monsters. Like The Suicide Squad, the team enlisted aren’t exactly the Super Friends and comprise of members that are more reminiscent of the Creature Commandos‘ run as The Agents of S.H.A.D.E. rather than anything from the OG series with the one exception being G.I. Robot (voiced by Sean Gunn). Together with Rick and G.I., we get The Bride of Frankenstein (Indira Varma), Dr. Phosphorus (Alan Tudyk), Nina Mazursky (Zoe Chao), and kinda The Frankenstein (David Harbour), the last of whom is more of a love-sick puppy dog trying to reunite with his long-lost love and probably acts more like a fly-in-the-ointment than a standard team member.

During the course of the seven-episode first season, Creature Commandos not only gives so much to the team’s mission during the show’s 30-minute runtimes, but each episode delves deeper into the back stories of these characters that, guess what, don’t all make it in the end. That said, it’s fun building those deeper connections that make you fall in love with these characters which is something that James Gunn has always been one of the best in the world at doing. Not unlike what he did on Guardians of the Galaxy, and I think even more prescient in The Suicide Squad, don’t expect a Batman or Rorschach policy of truth and justice with any of these mentally-messed up characters who carry with them such huge crosses to bear.

I’m not getting too hung up on WHO the members are and comic accuracy either. James has opened the doors(literally) to a prison sprawling with new and familiar characters that could certainly be made a part of the team in future iterations. What I’m more concerned with is James’ ability to keep together an all-star level of talent at every level for the continuation of this series for years to come not the the least of which includes supervising director Yves “Balak” Bigerel whose studio Bobbypills is becoming increasingly active in the American adult animation scene having also work on series like Invincible (promos mostly) and Last Man so if you’re going to kick off an adult animated superhero series that needs to be gruesome and not-safe-for-work, start with those guys because I’m hard-pressed to find another studio as good as them right now in that department as they’ve exceeded expectations in bringing the stylish, sexy, and dramatic Gunn scripts to life. Dean Lorey, having previously brought in excellent adaptations of Harley Quinn and Kite Man: Hell Yeah to the MAX streaming service already continues is stellar reputation as a rock-solid showrunner.

Last, but not least, the musical score. James has arguably made his name in showbiz coupling outlandish soundtracks that seem to work in the superhero movie medium and that continues here. Get ready to warm up that Shazam App during and at the end of every friggin’ episode, because promises of a lot Gogol Bordello and The Dresden Dolls have come true but there are other contributions from the likes of bands such as Korpiklaani (!!!!!!!!), Firewater, and Kaizers Orchestra that help elevate each and every scene they are used in, mostly the fight scenes. Kudos also has to be given to James Gunn is the voice director for Creature Commandos because he gets excellent performances from everyone from top-to-bottom, most notably from the likes of his brother Sean Gunn who voices both G.I. Robot and Weasel. Is a guy voicing TWO different characters not impressive enough for you? FiNE! How about THREE principal characters in Dr. Phosphorus, Clayface (done in an entirely different way from how he does it in Harley Quinn) and Will Magnus voiced by the legendary Alan Tudyk who is as good of a utility player as it gets but can also get you fastballs for strikes as leading characters.

Fans of comic book adaptations, and specifically those of James Gunn adaptations, are going to geek out at all of the cameos and Easter eggs and they should. But Creature Commandos feels every bit the comic adaptation from James Gunn as anything he’s done in live-action and might actually surpass a few of those entries in terms of their execution. While most writer/directors with James Gunn’s accolades by now would probably just mail it in with an EP credit and then have someone else write everything, James not only takes on the reigns but ups the ante for future comic adaptations to animation in the future.

Creature Commandos gives us a fun ending, one that seems to indicate that there’s at least some interest from James Gunn to want to continue the series. If the production team isn’t the exact same as what we have here I almost don’t even want it. Because Creature Commandos is so good I’m not sure this isn’t James Gunn’s battle cry to let the comic adaptation fans that currently stick with Disney+ and Prime Video that this is a destination dish.