History of Creature Commandos

[Music] what's up my comic comrades the first official DCU project under James gun's leadership Creature Commandos is almost here it's just days away and we could not be more excited it's an animated show on Max that is connected to James gun's greater DCU such as it Superman movie Peacemaker season 2 the lantern series Supergirl and everything else under James gun's DCU Banner with that said even for Comic readers the Creature Commandos are a deep pull not even regular comic book fans talking about them regardless James gun specialty is making obscure characters fan favorites so I'm

sure they won't stay obscure for long now last year we did an episode breaking down who are the Creature Commandos so if you saw that episode a good chunk of this is going to sound familiar but in this episode we're going to be expanding on that as this is a history of episode but as always let's start with how they got their start with origins The Creature Commandos first appeared in weird war Tales 93 in 1980 they were created by jam dtis and Pat brri the team consisted of monster archetypes that were created by the

milit to strike fear into their enemies when we were first introduced to the Creature Commandos we see them busting through a wall ready to take down Nazis as a big caption says introducing World War III's weirdest Warriors the Creature Commandos we then get their origin which begins at a Midwest army base on a winds swep spring Day in 1942 captions say security is tight on the base and even the usually well-informed top brass that pass through the heavily guarded front Gates know next to nothing about the mysterious Project M as a high-ranking military head flashes

a project M top security clearance B we then see all the military heads in a room with a caption saying from across the nation and across the globe they came generals Admirals senators and their uneasy attention is locked on the solitary figure Lieutenant Matthew shrive of the US Army intelligence we see he tells them now that we are all here I think we can begin I want to talk to you about the dark Realms the underside of man's Consciousness the Realms where we keep our personal monsters in mental chains one of the Admirals says now

look here son I didn't leave the war and come running here just to listen to some tripe about Things That Go Bump in the night just what the devil have you Army boys got going that's so important firstly Admiral the project is the result of a combined effort of all our Armed Forces not to mention a number of Civilian groups secondly if you'll just turn your attention to the screen behind me I believe all your well-intended questions will be answered okay so one strive says I believe all your well-intended questions will be answered the lights

go dim and a film starts up on the screen behind them we then see Lieutenant Matthew on the screen working on some sort of monster lying on a table with him commenting as many of you already know intelligence has long been interested in aing the war effort not just on the physical level but on a psychological one as well we research the subconscious archetypes the symbols of fright and horror that all men seem to share regardless of Social and cultural conditioning and then we set about scientifically recreating them that was the birth of Project M

for Monster so basically we learned that the US Army intelligence has been experimenting and recreating classic monsters to scare their enemies but the kicker is they've been using humans to do this the first one we learn about is Warren Griffith an Oklahoma farm boy with a problem he suffers from l anthropy a condition a team of specifically selected scientists and medical men managed to manifest physically in our young volunteer AKA a form of insanity in which a person imagines himself a werewolf Lieutenant shrieve then says next came Sergeant Vincent velaro who wisely managed to avoid

a 30-year sentence in an army Brig by joining Project M for 6 months he was injected with a compound composed of experimental chemicals and blood extract from the new Mexican vampire bat and the result was intriguing he goes on to say finally there was a good-hearted Marine private named Lucky Taylor whose luck ran out when he stepped on a landmine on some godforsaken island in the Pacific our surgeons worked on him for weeks on end putting lucky back together again although not the way he was originally constructed so what we learn and see is that

the Army had turned civilians into their versions of The Wolf Man Dracula and Frankenstein's monster at this point the film feed Fades as all the high ranking officials rise an outrage yelling at the lieutenant saying what is this nonsense how dare you call us together to hear such idiocy Lieutenant shrie says s be calm and behold the Creature Commandos as they liter come bursting through the wall Lieutenant Shar says a slightly melodramatic entrance but one that I think gets the point across quite effectively the general says you expect us to be fooled by some ludicrous

Hollywood Costume job I'm appall Lieutenant Vincent velaro AKA The Vampire then says appalled you don't know the meaning of the word first understand what it is to be transformed into some kind of repugnant thing and then be appalled this is no Hollywood Costume job General ludicrous though it may be you and your ilk have made me a creature that needs human blood to survive survive and I will have yours vilaro then turns into a bat and then a vampire again going for the General's neck Lieutenant shrieve orders Griffith the man wolf and then lucky the

green frankenstein-like monster to stop velaro which he ultimately does by grabbing velaro by the neck captions say when the surgeons rebuilt lucky Taylor's Body they neglected to give him vocal cords and thus he says nothing he merely flashes frustration from the depths of his pale blue eyes after this display the general comes over saying Lieutenant shrieve these Commandos of yours are a menace they are a terrifying reprehensible assortment of humans and I hope that I never set eyes on them again but that doesn't negate the fact that they may be the most effective secret weapons

this country has ever seen so you take your Creature Commandos lieutenant and you teach those Nazis the true meaning of the word fear so the brass goes ahead and sends them to France to take on the Nazis and once they arrive they see that the Nazis have created Androids duplicating Roosevelt Stalin Churchill and Eisenhower Lieutenant Shri says look around Eisenhower Stalin Churchill they're constructing a horde of these things Android duplicat H for the Nazis to slip in secretly think of it Allied Nations being run by ponds they are then interrupted by the Nazis saying it

is a beautiful plan is it not a pity you will not live to see it come to fruition but clearly they do as the Creature Commandos take care of all the Nazis and just like that the Creature Commandos were formed but with their origin out of the way it's time to get into their story arcs and publication history now obviously we're all excited about Creature Commandos and that includes the toys and collectibles we're going to get for these characters which we'll be getting from our friends and today's sponsor big bad toy store case in point

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had their ey on at a discount so whether it's for you or a friend you got to shop Big Bad Toy Store throughout this holiday season and watch for each holiday Hot 100 just click the link in our description and let them know that we sent you all right as we jump into our monster team story arcs I'll remind you that the original lineup of the Creature Commandos consisted of Lieutenant shrie Warren Griffith the werewolf Sergeant Vincent velaro the vampire and lucky Taylor Frankenstein's monster but by the time issue 110 of weird W Tales rolled

around Dr Myra rhods would be introduced and eventually join the Creature Commandos as Dr Medusa after she inhaled strange fumes and grew living snakes for hair just like Medusa of Greek mythology then at the end of creature command's 110 she tells them the chemical bath I got turned me into a monstrosity there's no place for me in the world except with you I want no favors because I am a woman they gladly accept her into the creature commando's roster which continues to grow in the very next issue issue 111 would introduce the deadly GI robot

to the team this issue deals with the Commandos being sent on a mission to stop enemies who are looking to sabotage key wartime operations but during their mission they end up meeting and teaming up with GI robot also known as Jake which stands for Jungle automatic killer experimental GI robot is just as it sounds a robot made to help humans fight in war by the end of issue 111 GI robot self- detonates to save the Creature Commandos and the world from missile strikes Dr Medusa cries over GI with Shri saying you are a freak crying

for a robot Dr Medusa cries over GI robot with Shri saying you are a freak crying for a robot she says the world is indebted to Jake I wonder if we'll see another one of his kind and they most certainly do when Jake makes his return as Jake 2 in issue 113 Jake 2 is a replacement sent to soldiers to Aid them in combat so they have the medic put him together getting him online so he could help them fight the Samurai Robot which he defeats by swinging his head like a ball in chain smashing

it from here Jake would become a reoccurring member of the team starting in issue 115 of the Creature Commandos with the title being the Creature Commandos and GI robot when he appeared in an issue helping them the Creature Commandos stories and weird Tales lasted from issues 93 through 124 however they would reappear in their own Series in 2000 simply called Creature Commandos this was post the Zero Hour event and not the best take on the team the Creature Commandos were renamed M Team Alpha and given a new leader Captain hunter from Hunter's hellcats they were

also given new members such as addin a resurrected mummy Bogman an amphibious creature Gunner a cybernetic zombie who was once part of the losers and Colonel Ben Hunter whose aging process has been greatly decelerated but like I said it was not the best take on the team however by the time DC's New 52 rolled around we would get another revamp of the Creature Commandos in the form of Frankenstein agent of shade which ran from 2011 to 2013 this is the new 52s version of the Creature Commandos shade is an acronym for the Superhuman Advanced defense

Executives in this first issue of the series we're introduced to this roster of the Creature Commandos Father Time who was taking the body of a little girl introduces Frankenstein to the creature Commando saying meet division M shade science division's latest Pet Project the werewolf says call us the Creature Commandos with the Vampire saying yes isn't that what you boys have nicknamed us the comic then gives us a brief bio of each of the characters first up is Dr Nina mzeri it says shade science agent transformed herself into an amphibian human hybrid via Cutting Edge Eugenics

Warren Griffin new shade recruit volunteered for Infusion of a unique strand of Lupine blood transforming him into a werewolf meaning this is the same version from the original just revamped we also get the same vampire Vincent velaro it says former shade pilot transformed into a vampire ire crossbreed with a modified version of the langstrom serum meaning in this version he became a vampire due to a modified version of manbat serum and lastly There's khis real identity Unknown Origin unknown he's a mummy and a medic even the bride AKA The Bride of Frankenstein or lady Frankenstein

shows up in the Agents of shade version of the Creature Commandos and she has a very complicated relationship with Frankenstein her and Franken science interaction is one of the things I'm looking most forward to about the creature Commando show also GI robot he's probably going to be great so clearly from that little breakdown you could tell that James gun is basically doing an amalgamation of the original Creature Commandos and this agents of shade version of the Creature Commandos pulling characters like GI robot from the original and Dr Nina mazeri from this we're not exactly sure

what origin they're going to go with in the series but we could assume it's probably going to be a mixture of both that's modified to have Amanda Waller's involvement as we've seen in the trailers it seems she can't use humans anymore to go on these crazy missions of hers so her loophole is using creatures because since they're not technically human she could do what she wishes with them and it's all led by Rick flag senior then we have the most current creature Commando series from this year 2024 that's only two issues in at the time

of making this video the team consists of the original lineup of Frankenstein the vampire Dr Medusa and werewolf it's only a six-issue limited series but if you're interested in the Creature Commandos this is a nice easy way to jump into the Creature Commandos comic but with that said it's time to talk about powers and abilities now doing powers and abilities for teams is a bit complicated because you basically just have to go through every character's abilities that are on the team so here's a brief overview of each of the characters abilities starting with Frankenstein's monster

he's what we know from Mary Shell's Frankenstein he has superhuman strength and durability due to his reanimated body that was stitched together with a bunch of different body parts he also has enhanced stamina and resistance to damage not to mention he's Immortal being that he's neither dead or alive and since he's been around for hundreds of years he has a ton of knowledge in combat and weaponry moving along we have Warren AKA werewolf like you would assume he has all the powers a werewolf would have enhanced smell hearing agility superhuman strength a healing factor in

wolf form and he is also susceptible to Silver then we have Vincent velaro AKA The Vampire who yet again as you would assume has all the powers a vampire has then we have Dr Medusa who has hair made of venomous snakes that are capable of attacking and immobilizing her opponents and similar to Medusa of Greek mythology she has something called the Gorgon glare that temporarily stuns her opponents as opposed to turning them to Stone as for lady Frankenstein she has superhuman strength and durability she is also a master combatant and highly skilled weaponry and of

course in this series Dr phosphorus will be part of the Creature Commandos he has the ability of pyrokinesis enhanced durability he's an expert chemist he also and most notably has been transformed into a living chemical reactor emitting immense radiation meaning he can basically kill burn or poison anyone in close vicinity to him weasel is also joining the team for the DCU as we saw in James gun's Suicide Squad he's just a humanoid weasel who likes to kill children then we have Nina mazery think of her as a female Abe Sapien from Hellboy there's also G

GI robot who I went over briefly earlier in story arcs he's a military robot who can do all sorts of stuff he possesses super strength enhanced durability Advanced Weaponry artificial intelligence enhance mobility and more and lastly rounding out the team we have Rick flag senior who will be leading the team in the creature Commando show much like his son actually more so he is a military expert he is in Peak Human Condition a fantastic leader expert pilot strategic thinker master combatant and all-around strategic and tactical Problem Solver but with that said it's now time for

reading recommendations which is actually not all that hard considering the Creature Commandos unfortunately have not had that many stories and Comics All Things Considered however check out weird war Tales starting in issue 93 running through 124 read the 2000 scree Commandos 8 issue limited series definitely check out Frankenstein agent of shade and lastly read the brand new 2024 creature Commando 6 issue limited series that should be enough to get you all started but there you have it friends the history of the Creature Commandos I hope this gets you ready for the kickoff of James guns

DC see you hopefully the show is amazing and it's the start of something great for a Cinematic Universe for DC films God I hope so other than that let me know what you think of Creature Commandos down in the comments and we'll see you next time when we talk about all things comics [Music]