Don’t expect a James Gunn cameo in ‘Creature Commandos’

The opening credits of Creature Commandos introduce viewers to the motley crew of monsters who star in the new DC animated series — as well as one real-life human along for the ride. The titular team consists of Rick Flag, Sr. (Frank Grillo), Frankenstein (David Harbour), the Bride of Frankenstein (Indira Varma), Doctor Phosphorus (Alan Tudyk), the fishlike Nina Mazursky (Zoe Chao), Weasel, and G.I. Robot (both Sean Gunn). But the opening sequence of every episode also features an animated version of James Gunn, who wrote every episode of the show. 

Does this mean viewers should expect Gunn to appear in Creature Commandos as a character, like he did in season 3 of the Harley Quinn animated series? Not so fast, according to Gunn and producer Dean Lorey. 

“I don’t think that I’m going to pop up in Creature Commandos,” Gunn tells Entertainment Weekly ahead of the show’s premiere. “Dean did that to me, he thought he was doing me a favor and now I’m going to be forever accused of putting myself in the opening credits.”

Lorey clarifies, “he did not put himself in the opening credits. We did it to him.” 

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On the surface, Creature Commandos looks a lot like Harley Quinn and its recent spinoff, Kite Man: Hell Yeah! They’re all animated DC shows featuring superhero and supervillain characters made for an adult audience, with lots of swear words and bloody violence.

But as the first official installment in the new interconnected DC universe overseen by Gunn and Peter Safran, Creature Commandos will also establish a different tone than those anarchic predecessors. It will also be part of the same canon and continuity as Peacemaker and next year’s Superman movie, while Harley Quinn remains cordoned off in its own little galaxy. 

“We wanted to keep the Harley-verse separate as its own thing, and to allow Creature Commandos to be really distinct,” Lorey says. “First of all, they’re all written by James, so it has a very different tonal feel than the Harley shows, which are more pure comedies. Creature Commandos is very grounded and it has a certain amount of gravity to it. It’s as much a drama as anything else. We gave it this Eastern European feel along with the setting, and we treated it as if it was a serious live-action film that we just happened to be animating.” 

The first two episodes of Creature Commandos are streaming on Max now, with subsequent episodes releasing every Thursday through the first week of January.