Creature Commandos ends better than James Gunn’s Suicide Squad

With its season 1 finale, Creature Commandos has secured its spot for the strangest first installment of an interconnected cinematic superhero universe. And James Gunn’s Max animated series also nailed a satisfying conclusion. “A Very Funny Monster” is twisty and tense, earns its emotional beats, sets up for a new season in the burgeoning DCU, and doesn’t even end in a big loud blowout.

What might be most remarkable about Creature Commandos’ first season is that it’s pretty much a better — and more faithful — Suicide Squad story than The Suicide Squad, Gunn’s 2021 blockbuster. You could say that’s because he’s gained experience with the concept or that he had more freedom this time around. After all, Gunn wrote Creature Commandos after The Suicide Squad, and the show was produced after he was tapped as co-CEO of DC Studios.

But that would be speculation. What I’m comfortable saying without a doubt, is that a good part of what Creature Commandos work is the format. Stories like this just hit better when serialized.

Gunn’s approach to Creature Commandos is old hat by now, even to superhero movie watchers: The group of C-list weirdos you have to Google to even figure out if you know them from somewhere are forced to do shady superhero stuff for a shady government operative. Even the MCU is getting in on the trope.

Creature Commandos promised a top (i.e., bottom) tier of weirdos. But thanks to its episodic format and one efficient and effective structural decision, the Commandos G.I. Robot, Weasel, Doctor Phosphorus, Nina Mazursky, and the Bride (of the public domain’s Frankenstein) were better realized than any of their Squad predecessors in either films. Except maybe for Peacemaker, but only because, wait for it, he got his own television show.

After one establishing pilot episode, Creature Commandos settled into a firm but adaptable structure: Half the episode moves the plot along, and the other half focuses on one of the Commandos, past and present. It’s a simple format — and in this case, a smart one.

It might be possible to squeeze 6-7 compelling and endearing origin story flashbacks into a single action movie without sapping some of its momentum, but I think the two Suicide Squad movies at least prove that it’s very difficult. It’s much easier to do it as half of a 20-30 minute episode that rhymes with the main action. And Creature Commandos doesn’t just commit to its structure, uses it to create expectations and then, most importantly, play against them.

I waited all season to find out what was up with gill-woman Nina Mazursky in this telling. And Gunn subtly made her the most mysterious character of the lot, while — Nina’s limited powers, kind disposition, and repeatedly emphasized moral fiber raised one glaring question:. How did she wind up in prison and on a team of killers in the first place? I wasn’t familiar with her comics origin, and since the origin stories of characters that obscure rarely make it to adaptations word-for-word, I didn’t bother.

When the penultimate episode focused on Doctor Phosphorus instead, I thought Ah, well, at least now I know when I’ll find out what Nina’s deal is next week. Creature Commandos absolutely used that anticipation against me, to great effect.

[Ed note: This piece contains spoilers for the finale of Creature Commandos season 1.]

Nina’s tragic death, paired with the reveal of her tragic life — an innocent woman who found brief freedom in abandoning humanity to be a harmless monster, until humanity murdered her father for caring about her and dropped her into Amanda Waller’s clutches — gives our true lead, the Bride, a full emotional circle.

She makes up for her own failings and avenges Nina’s death, by being the only person in the show to uncover the hidden monstrousness behind a perfect Disney princess exterior and defuse the real threat. And by her acceptance of the leadership position of a new incarnation of the Creature Commandos, the Bride seems to have found new purpose in embodying the role of monster if it allows her to take out the inwardly monstrous. I’m very much looking forward to seeing where Gunn and actor Indira Varma take her next.

The lesson from Creature Commandos isn’t for comic-universe creators to stop making team superhero movies, I think, but just to consider that what has made team stories work in superhero comics are almost entirely things that are the first to be left on the editing room floor in superhero movies. Things like mundanity, long-form character continuity, and interpersonal drama that doesn’t rise to existential stakes.

The most successful, memorable, revisited team comics in superhero history are, overwhelmingly, not action showcases. They’re soap operas with punching interludes, like the classic West Coast Avengers, Claremont’s Uncanny X-Men, or Runaways. And if they’re not soap operas, they’re workplace comedies, like Brian Michael Bendis’ Avengers or Justice League International.

In its first season, Creature Commandos, though just as cynical, gore-filled, and dire as the plot of The Suicide Squad, feels lighter, and like its characters achieve a larger measure of unblemished satisfaction. Maybe that’s because Gunn learned some lessons from his time writing a big-screen outing for that team, or because he built Creature Commandos from the ground up as DC Studios head honcho. (Maybe it’s in part because its heroes didn’t massacre about a billion innocent Starro-zombified people.)

Whatever the case, Creature Commandos season 1 is a great reminder that format is king.