“M” for Monster: The Weird Origin Story of the Original Creature Commandos

They were World War II’s weirdest warriors: the Creature Commandos. While DC Comics had published the wartime tales of Sgt. Rock and the Blackhawks, and pit Superman and Batman against the Axis powers decades earlier, the publisher’s war comics were typically hard-hitting stories of action and heroism with military men like Capt. Storm, Sgt. “Sarge” Clay, and Lt. Flying Cloud. It wasn’t until an issue of Weird War Tales — DC’s Tales from the Crypt-like anthology series in which Death hosted stories about the horror of combat, often featuring literal monsters — that the strangest soldiers of all time would debut on the front lines of the Second World War.

Introduced in 1980’s Weird War Tales #93 by J.M. DeMatteis and artist Pat Broderick, the Creature Commandos were the product of the mysterious Project “M” (“M” for monster), a joint effort of the United States Armed Forces. Lieutenant Matthew Shrieve of U.S Army Intelligence revealed Project “M” was born of research into the subconscious archetypes — and the military’s attempt to scientifically recreate the symbols of fright and horror that all humans share.

RELATED: Creature Commandos Reviews: What Critics Are Saying About the First DCU Series

Lt. Shrieve introduced the military’s top men to the recruits of Project “M”:

The man-wolf Warren Griffith, a 4-F not qualified for military service due to his affliction of lycanthropy — a condition that a team of scientists managed to physically manifest in the timid Oklahoman farmboy. Howl-ever, Griffith’s condition was unstable, and he was prone to changing back and forth between his human and werewolf form uncontrollably.

The blood-sucking Sergeant Vincent Velcro, who avoided a 30-year sentence for crippling a superior officer by volunteering for Project “M.” Velcro was injected with experimental chemicals and the blood of the New Mexican vampire bat to become a vampire with the ability to transform into a bat.

The clumsy former Marine Elliot “Lucky” Taylor, reconstructed by military surgeons after stepping on a landmine. Rebuilt to resemble Frankenstein’s monster, the sensitive but still monstrous man-brute possessed inhuman strength, stamina, and durability.

Although they were deemed a “terrifying, reprehensible assortment of inhuman dregs” by Shrieve’s superiors, the so-called “Creature Commandos” were deemed America’s most effective secret weapons when they were dispatched to Nazi-occupied France in spring of 1942.

The Creature Commandos’ first mission was to destroy a centuries-old French castle that the Germans seized as a stronghold to conduct experiments. They slaughtered their way through Hitler’s killer elite and foiled a plot to replace world leaders with the Nazi’s android duplicates — including President Franklin D. Roosevelt, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Sir Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin — and install them as Third Reich pawns.

Lt. Shrieve continued to lead the Creature Commandos as America’s most horrific secret operatives in Weird War Tales #97. Their next mission was to liberate France’s top scientist after she was captured by the Germans, but that turned out to be a ploy to lure Shrieve’s supernatural squadron into a trap.

Their campaign continued to the South Pacific in 1943, where the werewolf, the vampire, the patchwork man-monster, and their human commander battled the Imperial Japanese Army in Weird War Tales #100. The Creature Commandos fought their way across an isle of dinosaurs, infiltrated Germany to battle Hitler’s army of super-powered youths, rooted out Nazi sympathizers in the American town named Freedom, and liberated a death camp.

A fifth member of the team, Dr. Myrna Rhodes, the Army’s Chief Plastic Surgeon, joined in Weird War Tales #110 when the Creature Commandos accidentally exposed her to a mix of experimental chemicals after learning the procedures that turned the men into monsters were irreversible. The chemical bath turned her into a gorgon with living snakes for hair like Medusa.

1982’s Weird War Tales #111 was the first time the Creature Commandos — Lt. Shrieve, the vampiric Velcro, the mute monster Taylor, the werewolf Griffith, and the snake-haired Dr. Medusa — joined forces with the G.I. Robot, a.k.a. J.A.K.E. (Jungle Automatic Killer Experimental), successor of the G.I. Robot “Joe” from DC’s Star-Spangled War Stories.

Their final mission was in Weird War Tales #124, the final issue of the anthology series, which ended with the Creature Commandos boarding an ICBM that the military aimed at Hitler’s chancellery in Berlin. But when the rocket malfunctioned, the rocket blasted off toward an unknown destination in space. And so the horrors of war had come to an end.

A more modern version of Project “M” appears in DC Studios’ Creature Commandos, the first series set in the new DC Universe. Written and executive produced by James Gunn, the seven-episode adult animated series picks up after the events of the Gunn-directed The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker, and sees Amanda Waller (voiced by Viola Davis) form Project M after Task Force X is disbanded by Congress.

Waller recruits Rick Flag Sr. (Frank Grillo) to lead the new task force of incarcerated monsters recruited for missions too dangerous for humans: The Bride (Indira Varma), Frankenstein (David Harbour), Nina Mazursky (Zoe Chao), Dr. Phosphorus (Alan Tudyk), and GI Robot and Weasel (Sean Gunn). Creature Commandos premieres Dec. 5 on Max.