The Creature Commandos

by J.M. DeMatteis, Robert Kanigher, Mike W. Barr

In one of DC's strangest comics ever, a werewolf, a vampire, a gorgon, and Frankenstein's monster fight the German forces during World War II. Originally published in the early 1980s, The Creature Commandos laid the groundwork for recent series like FRANKESTEIN, AGENT OF S.H.A.D.E.

Collects WEIRD WAR TALES #93, 97, 100, 102, 105, 108-112, 114-119, 121 and 124.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Dc Comics, Horror, War, Fiction, Graphic Novels Comics

284 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 2013

About the author

Also Credited As:
DeMatteis, John Marc
Ellis, Michael
Lombego, Wally

Bio:
J.M. DeMatteis was a professional musician/singer and rock music journalist before entering comics in the late 70's.

Credits include Spider-Man, Moonshadow, Brooklyn Dreams, Justice League, Abadazad, Hero Squared, the Life and Times of Savior 28.

Created I, Vampire , Creature Commandos, Moonshadow, Hero Squared (co-creator), Abadazad, Stardust Kid, Savior 28 and more.

Reviews

[Benji's Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really entertaining, though each issue was too short to really delve into these characters. The earliest stuff of these Creature Commandos was probably the best content in this book, with a brief summary of their intriguing origins.

Lucky's character, the Frankenstein's Monster looking dude, being seen as the heart of the team throughout the whole book was probably my favorite aspect of the stories.

All in all, good fun and I can see why Weird War Tales were such a hit. After the Vietnam War passed, War Comics sales started to go down, so DC had the great idea of adding supernatural elements to their War comics. This is some of the best stuff to come out of them.

[James · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars. This was about as generic as it gets. You have a few people, due to varying circumstances, get turned into monsters. A vampire, a wolf man, a Frankenstein monster and a Medusa snake hair lady. The military puts them under the command of a Lt. Shrieve to fight in the war against Hitler. It was a cool idea/concept with some cool characters that none of the writers did any character development with. There were also no over arching plots that extend through multiple issues to draw you in. Every issue was just a new random mission where the creature commandos were never challenged. They won every fight with the greatest of ease. Oh well. I guess I’ll see what they do with these guy in the animated show.

[Darik · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a truly difficult book to rate, because the first seven or eight issues-- written by concept creator J.M. DeMatteis-- are genuinely impactful anti-war stories with troubling ethical questions baked into every issue... while the REST of the volume (written by Silver Age journeyman Robert Kanigher) is anodyne sci-fi garbage, such as the characters discovering a city of Atlantis populated by robot Aztecs, or traveling to the year 3000 to discover a future populated by giant blonde übermenschen (the eugenicist implications of which go completely unexamined despite this being a WORLD WAR II comic, leaving it feeling a trifle... problematic).

But for those first handful of issues... man, there's some interesting stuff going on in this book! The hook is that this is a platoon of soldiers that have been transformed, via medical science, into dead ringers (no pun intended) for the three classic Universal monsters-- but all of them are subtle subversions of the tropes.

Sgt. Vincent Velcro is the resident vampire; a military prisoner convicted of assaulting a superior officer, Velcro volunteers for the procedure to get out of a lifetime jail sentence. So rather than the vampire being a parasitic, aristocratic leech, he's actually the VICTIM of exploitation and oppression. Warren Griffith is a 4-H young man transformed into a werewolf; but rather than feeling remorseful about the harm he causes, he RELISHES violence and bloodshed-- representing how war turns young men into mindless, bloodthirsty beasts. And then you have Pvt. "Lucky" Taylor, who stepped on a landmine and was pieced back together as the team's resident Frankenstein monster. Taylor is the most human and sensitive of them all, but he's been mutilated by war so that others can't bear the sight of him-- seemingly a comment on wounded war vets (I doubt it's a coincidence that Taylor has no voice).

And of course, there's Lt. Shrieve: the blonde-haired, handsome commanding officer who is framed as the REAL monster of the group (because he's a hardass military man with no empathy).

The team had a genuinely great dynamic initially, and the stories hit like a ton of bricks... but with DeMatteis's departure and Kanigher's arrival, the book pivoted HARD to lazy melodrama-- in particular, with the addition of Dr. Myrna Rhodes, a.k.a. "Dr. Medusa", a doctor who has snakes for hair and... that's it, no other Gorgon powers. Rhodes becomes the unrequited love of Pvt. Taylor while constantly bursting into tears about how no one could possibly love her; it's all very trite and tedious.

By all rights, this should be a three-star book... but... those first bunch of issues... MAN, there was a hell of a concept there!

[Travis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Years before Dreamworks gave us 'Monsters vs Aliens', DC gave us a great series of stories featuring 'Monsters vs Nazis'.

Using science to create a team of monsters to use against the germans in WW2.
Lots of fun stories full of action, the occasional bit of odd sci-fi ideas and some heavy handed morals.

Since the CCs appeared in one of DC's war anthologies all the stories are fairly short, which can leave some of them feeling rushed. Wish they'd been able to move into their own title and we could have gotten more longer stories.

Also, their are a few stories where they team up with the great GI Robot character. They should have included all the robot's stories as well and put this out as a big Showcase volume.

Love these guys. A great blend of dark and goofy.

DC needs to get these guys their own movie. Forget all that messing about with Batman.

[cloverina]

Gonna DNF this one because I'm only 63 pages in after months and not eager to continue by any stretch of the mind.

[Murphy C · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of Bronze Age fun!

[Kevin Findley · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the strangest concepts I've ever read. Long before The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen put classic characters in a single story, DeMatteis and Co. did the same with the classic monsters. Starting in 1980, these soldiers were regular entries into Weird War Tales. Several of the concepts, such as Project M, were adapted into other titles set in WWII (All-Star Squadron and Young All-Stars). The idea was eventually adapted into other versions with the latest being S.H.A.D.E.

A definite read for fans of war and monster stories.

Find it! Buy it! Read it!

[Anthony · Rating 3 out of 5]

From the late 70's through the early 90's, I probably bought every comic DC and Marvel put out. Didn't matter if it was super-heroes, war, western, horror ... about the only thing I stayed away from was the romance titles, and those were pretty much gone by the mid-70's anyway. I enjoyed the non-super stuff just as much as the super, and titles like Weird War Tales (and Marvel's War Is Hell, which didn't last as long) really clicked with me. Being also a fan of the Universal monster movies of the 30s (Dracula, Frankenstein, Wolfman), high school me (the stories were originally published in 1980-83) was probably the ideal audience for the Creature Commandos, and I ate up every issue in which they appeared (not that I didn't love Jake, the G.I. Robot). That massive comics collection has been whittled away over the years, and I have no idea when I sold off all of the war and western titles but I always regretted selling off the issues with the Creature Commandos.

This collection brings all of those stories back -- some were full-issue-length, some were 8 pages or so -- and while I'm glad I picked it up, the nostalgic glow is a little tarnished. Read back-to-back, the plots feel a bit repetitive in theme and formulaic in execution. They can be summed up as: Human commander berates his "freak" squad as they embark on a mission; mission involves saving normal humans from some unusual/supernatural foe; normal humans freak out when they learn they've been saved by "monsters;" human commander reminds the CC they'll never have a real life. Even when Shrieve seems to learn his lesson, to see past the scarred/monstrous exteriors to the truly good men (and woman) within, the lesson doesn't last long. (It is somewhat telling that even in the one page "series finale," thrown together to write the characters off with Weird War Tales' cancellation before DC's big Crisis on Infinite Earths, the CC and GI Robot are about to be executed by firing squad, and Shrieve's only action is to reprieve them ... so they can be sent on an experimental ICBM aimed at Hitler's Chancellory.) Still, the characters (other then Shrieve) do experience some growth before the end of the run, despite the writing chores bouncing between DeMatteis, Kanigher and Mike W. Barr.

The art is a bit all over the place, as is to be expected from a monthly anthology title. While Fred Carrillo seems to have drawn the majority of the stories (in a style reminiscent of the great Ernie Colon: sketchy yet detailed), there's also stories drawn by Pat Broderick (not his best work), Bob Hall, Dan Speigle (who most humanized the Commandos, in my opinion; this was around the time he was doing such great work on Blackhawk as well), and even some inking by Jerry Ordway that I wonder if he even remembers doing. Then there were the issue covers: the Commandos had the honor of being drawn by the great Joe Kubert on their very first cover, but also by Ross Andru, Rich Buckler, Jim Aparo (one of my favorites of the non-Kubert covers), Joe Staton and Gil Kane (another favorite). I do wish some of those guys had done some of the actual story art.

[Quentin Wallace · Rating 5 out of 5]

I admit that going strictly by story content this is not a five star volume, but if you consider just how cool and kooky the concept is then five stars is justified.

The idea is the government creates a group of creatures to fight the Nazis, namely a werewolf, vampire and Frankenstein Monster. One of the issues is the somewhat nebulous science used to transform the soldiers, but I suppose that's not what the series is about. It gets really weird when a female doctor is exposed to a strange mixture of chemicals and finds herself with snakes for hair. Exactly what chemicals do that??

There's also some more silliness such as time travel, a flame goddess, and more, but then again the title of the comic was WEIRD War Tales.

Overall a really fun and unique series, especially for fans of the Universal Monsters and/or war comics.

[Shane Perry · Rating 3 out of 5]

If I hadn’t known this was written in the 80’s, I would’ve sworn this comic was written in the 40’s. Each issue contains over-explanation and, while that style seems quaint at first, it gets old quickly. I get that the Creature Commandos weren’t in every issue of Weird War Tales, but there was just too much exposition at times. Other traits of the time, especially the writing of female characters like Dr. Medusa are cringeworthy at best.

That all being said, I LOVE the concept for this book. There are some genuinely good stories in this collection (despite the last issue seemingly being cut out on accident?). Fred Carrillo’s artwork is fantastic, but the writing varies greatly from issue to issue.

[Peter Baran · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very basic done-in-one shorts from Weird War Tales where a scientifically created werewolf, vampire and Frankensteinesque monster are sent on missions, whilst their bullying handler taunts them and calls them freaks. Each story asks the question "who is the real monster?" and the answer is usually The Nazi's, though sometimes its their Seargent. GI Robot turns up occasionally to show them what selflessness looks like (not talking), and it gets a little more interesting when they add Dr Medusa to the cast (it give Lucky the Frankenstein something to pine over) though she has an absolute terrible "will this do" origin. I believe absolutely none of these characters will actually be in the Creature Commandos animated show.

[Brannigan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this series. It takes your horror movie monsters and mixes it with WWII war stories. It’s a lot of fun with some awesome characters.

[Max · Rating 2 out of 5]

With I, Vampire I read the original 80s version first and then read the New 52 reboot. I effectively did the reverse here, as even if the New 52 Frankenstein comic isn't exactly Creature Commandos it's clearly riffing on the same concept. But unlike I, Vampire, where I much preferred the original, with this I find myself vastly preferring the good part of New 52 Frankenstein.

Admittedly, "what if the Universal Monsters fought in World War II?" is a cool basic premise. But the stories never quite worked for me, and also things feel like they're hurt by the fact that neither the Frankenstein's monster nor the vampire are the original movie monsters. I get not using the same wolfman since he's copyrighted, and maybe Dracula proper is too powerful for the premise. But something I liked with the New 52 stuff was getting to have the original Frankenstein still hanging around having adventures. Plus this book commits the sin of making the Frankenstein alternately completely mute and only able to grunt. And when a woman gets added to the team, she's a gorgon for ... some reason. A gorgon with snake hair but no ability to turn people to stone. I much preferred the use of the Bride of Frankenstein and the female Gillman in the newer comics.

The actual stories start out okay, but things slip over time. There's two main writers here and the first does feel like he's doing an alright job. There's no multi-part stories or overarching plots but there is a sense of an overarching theme of exploring the horrors of war and contrasting them with the safer horrors of the Creature Commandos. Having the CO be the true monster is rather cliche but it helps give the team a running internal conflict. And the stories do have the advantage of being relatively grounded aside from the commandos themselves. Well, most of the time - they do of course visit Dinosaur Island but that's basically a requirement of all DC war characters.

The frustrating thing is that the second author gets more page count and then uses it to mostly do really goofy plots that feel out of the Silver Age. There's a story where the heroes find a Pacific outpost of Atlantis filled with robots who want to wipe out humanity, and another where half the story is them randomly travelling forward in time a thousand years to a Nazi's dream world of giant Aryans. There are a few neat moments in the stories but they often feel like they're just wacky for the sake of it. And while there's attempts at poignant bits, the only ones that ever seem to land are the ones focused on GI Robot whenever he shows up. Too bad there doesn't seem to be a collection of his adventures. Maybe now that he was a big part of the TV show DC will fix that.

And my feelings on the whole thing aren't helped when the resolution to the whole story is a one page comic that feels like a middle finger from somebody to somebody, though I'm not totally sure who's flipping off who. The Weird War Stories comic the commandos starred in got cancelled at issue 124, and they make a one page appearance in that comic where they get shoved in a rocket and blasted into space for absolutely no reason. The whole thing is so abrupt and stupid I had to check the full comic online to be sure I hadn't missed something.

Honestly, I don't mind that I read this, but I wish it had been as good as the later versions of the character or the other World War II DC comics I've read. The characters do feel like they could be revived easily and might do well with better stories. Though I'd still prefer they be the actual monsters and make the woman something more on theme than a Medusa. Probably neither the worst war nor the worse horror comic published by DC, but I don't feel like I'll ever want to revisit these stories.

[Bernie Gourley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having recently heard about the impending animated series being made under James Gunn's aegis, I read this book to learn who, exactly, were the "Creature Commandos." This volume collects eighteen issues of "Weird War Tales" from the 1980's and is where this superhero team got its start. It's not a complicated premise: a team consisting of characters based on classic horror figures is assembled to carry out challenging missions on behalf of Allied powers during World War II. It should be pointed out that these aren't the original horror characters, but rather were mostly made in the lab using "science." The core team of Lucky Taylor (Frankenstein's Monster-like,) Sgt. Velcro (Dracula-like,) and Griffith (a Werewolf) were all produced in such a way by "Project M." A fourth member of the team, Dr. Medusa (Myrra Rhodes,) got her powers in a laboratory accident (yes, this wasn't exactly sophisticated storytelling.) An occasional fifth member J.A.K.E., the robotic infantryman, appears in only a few issues.

This collection is definitely from another era. It is written with an audience of children in mind. It's not just the "science" that lacks cleverness, but also much of the dialogue and some of the story elements. It is also different in that there is no overarching story continuity. Each episode is standalone. This is probably in part because the Creature Commandos didn't have their own title at this point and were appearing in "Weird War Tales." In early issues there is a fair amount of repetitive exposition to catch new readers up, but that became less prominent as the series progressed.

Having said all that, many of the stories are compelling and -- despite the campiness -- the authors do succeed in making the reader sympathize with the core group and their plight as humans turned monster. My only complaint about character development would be with respect to the team's leader, Lt. Shrieve. I'm sure they were aiming for "gruff, war-hardened, but fundamentally decent," but through the first three-fourths of these comics Shrieve is completely detestable and has no redeeming value whatsoever. The authors did start to make course corrections toward the end, planting seeds to make Shrieve less loathsome, to make him someone that you can understand (despite his rough edges) why his team might save him instead of fragging him. I suspect that they wanted to make the most physiologically human character the least humane of the characters, but they took it too far.

All and all, I found this collection enjoyable to read -- despite being juvenile and camp -- and am looking forward to what they will do in the animated TV series. [Note: It is a different slate of characters and is otherwise updated to appeal to an adult audience, but - I suspect - draws from the original source material in some ways.]

[Griffin · Rating 3 out of 5]

6.5/10

This hasn't aged amazingly, but it's alright. The first half of this compilation gets pretty repetative due to how small this group starts out and us, the readers, knowing how these situations will turn out due to how clearly established these characters are. Once Dr. Rhodes and G.I. Robot are introduced, however, the proceeding adventures get much more entertaining. But as a whole, though, I don't find myself all that interested in most of these characters. Shrieve got annoying really fast and I kept hoping that he would get killed off and replaced. Griffith and Velcro (werewolf and vampire, respectively) were both fine, I guess, but not compelling enough to want to continue reading issue after issue about. The most interesting character, funny enough, was Lucky (the Frankensteinian monster). Even though he can not speak, his internal dilemma was is pathos incarnate, and when Dr. Rhodes is introduced it even further advances our investment and empathy for his character. Dr. Rhodes herself was also a welcome addition, adding an interesting feminine perspective to the team. I also really liked the J.A.K.E. (the robot) despite him only being a Special Guest in a selection of issues. The missions themselves ranged from harmless dinosaur battles to downright disturbing predicaments, including causing the deaths of an army of children who are under mind-control from the Nazis and visiting multiple concentration camps while the prisoners there are being murdered. That last part I found to be in pretty poor taste and wildly inappropriate. They can kill and maim as many Nazi bastards as they like, but putting these fictional (not to mention fantastical) characters in real life atrocites like the Holocaust I think is pretty disrespectful.

Aside from that, however, I do think this was a good read for the most part. Apart from some wacky and imaginative adventures, these characters go through emotions you would think living science experiments would go through if this were real. It's not great, but it's compelling enough.

[Norman Cook · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a title that has flown under my radar all these years, but when James Gunn announced this would be part of his first wave of DC movies, I wanted to check it out. At first, this comes off as the quintessential kind of comic book that comic book haters love to hate. I mean, classic horror monsters teamed up to fight Nazis (and occasionally Japanese)? What could be more insane? Yet, DeMatteis and Kanigher, et al, somehow make it work, even if many of the stories play the same notes over and over, and it has not aged particularly well. I can see why Gunn is attracted to this property, though; it has the same kind of kooky vibe that Guardians of the Galaxy has. The series, which ran from 1980-83, tells the story of a group of American soldiers who undergo various experimental surgeries that turn them into a pseudo-Frankenstein monster, a vampire, and a werewolf, later to be joined by a female Medusa and occasionally by G.I Robot, all under the command of a psychopathic lieutenant who inside is perhaps the worst monster of them all. Their missions take them back and forth throughout the world, seemingly at random (i.e., whatever the writers felt like that month). The artwork is fairly mediocre. It will be interesting to see how Gunn adapts it for modern audiences (and somehow extracts a coherent story from the source material).

[Langston Lardi · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good read, definitely a product of its time. We follow the OG creature commando team (and sometimes GI Robot) through WW2 and while the stories are often pretty surface level and not many continuing branches, it does get the point across that being different isn’t such a bad thing and can even be special. The fact that the stories are more like individual one shots makes it easy to start and stop and start again without feeling lost. I will say a lot of the stories follow the same beats and same dialogue, but what else do you expect for a comic book from this time period and one on such lesser known characters. You get a good feel for each character and their personalities, my only wish is we seen more growth or just changed at all without the characters, for the most part what you see is what you get. Of course there is the new MAX Creature Commandos show that’s apart of the DCU, and it’s currently killing it and is phenomenal, but it is almost just creature commandos in name only as most the OG crew isn’t present, but I gotta say, it works in the shows favor. The tweaks made, both small and large work to make the team feel more unique. In this book are characters are definitely unique as monsters, but we never get too much time to see them fully shine. Overall still an interesting read if you’re never heard of the characters or if you love some old ww2 stores.

[Kris Shaw · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a silly, fun concept. Like The Invaders, this is a superhero series set during World War II. Unlike that title, though, this focuses on the macabre. The Allies disfigure and mutilate three people, turning them into a science-based vampire (Morbius did it first!), a patchwork Frankenstein Monster type, a werewolf, and several issues in, a gorgon. Their human commanding officer is the real monster though, the way that he treats this group of misfits. The GI Robot appearances were fascinating, and I would be interested in reading his early appearances in a collected edition because 350-400 unread books in my backlog are not enough.

This is an entertaining read. Fred Carillo's artwork is great, although pretty much everyone involved in this book eventually became a name. The ending is a bit choppy and lame, but I have a hunch that they had to wrap things up quick. This is solid stuff marred by DC's usual shoddy presentation.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

The premise is similar to the WWII era "Captain America" comics, but instead of creating a super-soldier, U.S. government experiments create a special forces team of monsters. They go on secret missions behind German and Japanese lines, but the stories are lacking any kind of corresponding villains on the Axis side. It would have punched up the stories to have some German werewolves or zombies or something like that appear. After a while it becomes a a bunch of faceless Nazis getting killed, and planes, trucks and tanks smashed. If the series had gone on much longer, I think it would have gotten boring- probably for the best it ended when it did. An admittedly silly premise, but a fun twist on the "Weird World War II" concept.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's one of the goofier concepts in the DC universe, but great fun all the same.
Three soldiers are scientifically altered into a Werewolf, a Vampire, and a creature resembling Frankenstein's monster. Led by a creep of a Lieutenant who constantly ridicules his charges, they take on the Nazis and the Japanese on the battlefields of W.W.II.
Later in the series, a female doctor is turned into a serpent-headed Gorgon through an accident, and an experimental robot is added to the mix.
Some of the storylines get pretty silly, but the characters' identities are well-developed and make up for other shortcomings in the book.

[Rhys Causon · Rating 3 out of 5]

A slow burn at the start but picks up once they stop over explaining the character’s origins in every story. But I get it, every comic is some ones first, so high change they needed explaining, especially if the weren’t a main stay in the books they were in.

[Dope Ghost Library · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hasn't aged the best but that's okay!
I still avidly love pulpy macabre comic book horror-fantasy of this caliber. Marvel's The Monster Of Frankenstein comic is much better but DC's Creature Commandos rocks on its own level of bizarre awesomeness.

[ed chumley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Glad I found this title

I've read comic books off and on for a number of years but had never heard of the Creature Commandos. Glad I discovered them, needless to say I will be reading more

[Matt Sautman · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a book, these stories possess a golden age approach despite coming out in the 1980s. While the stories can be fun, the lack of a larger continuity makes the book easy to skip unless a reader wants to see the original line-up for the Creature Commandos.

[Lincoln · Rating 4 out of 5]

pretty cool collection of a ton of old creature commandos comics
some issues were only like 10ish pages long which meant that there wasnt always a ton of character development, but the old drawings were still awesome paired with the old style of comics which i love

[Luci Nevins · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's interesting to look back at a classic work that's inspired a new series, but much like the series I found it hard to really be engaged in it (and elements of it have aged rather badly).

Wouldn't read again.

[Dominic Sedillo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lt. Shrieve, the only human on the team, has a bit of always being a hard ass on the Creature Commandos and calling them “freaks” every other panel gets old, but it’s a fun concept; monsters killing nazis in WW2.

[Ronald Marshall · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nonsensical Not Receive Comics

Creature Commandos have fair artwork And poor dialogue and lacks originality. The stories have lost touch with reality on a military level. Sincere, RM

[Ximena]

The creature commandos are bad bitches. Lt Shrieve is a just a bitch.

[Dan Blackley · Rating 4 out of 5]

What if the classic monsters of yore worked together as an elite unit during a world war? This book delves into that realm.