Creature Commandos

Wars are won and lost on the battlefield of psychology. A man at war can assume he has an even chance of victory against another man. But what happens when his enemy is a monster? The guiding principle that villains are characteristically superstitious and cowardly was applied to warfare in World War II with the United States military’s experimental “Project M,” transforming a small troop of battle-injured soldiers into classic icons of horror to deploy against Nazi forces, with powers to match.

Dubbed the “Creature Commandos,” the first incarnation of this team included Private Elliot “Patchwork” Taylor, stitched together with the visage of Frankenstein’s monster; Private Warren “Wolfpack” Griffith, made to resemble a werewolf; Sergeant Vincent Velcoro, the military’s man-made vampire; and Dr. Myrra “Medusa” Rhodes, granted the serpent-haired visage of the mythological gorgon. Like their spiritual cousins, the incarcerated super-villains of Task Force X, the Creature Commandos usually (but not always) feature a human handler to keep the team in line. 

Over time and multiple incarnations, mummies, cyborgs and G.I. Robots would pass through the ranks of the Creature Commandos, dispatched through the decades against America’s enemies in enemy nations, mythical kingdoms and beyond the stars, from sunken Atlantis to the domain of Brainiac.

In the modern era, the Creature Commandos operate under the auspices of S.H.A.D.E., the Super Human Advanced Defense Executive counter-terrorism unit. Previously based on New York’s Ferris Island, today’s Commandos are dispatched from “The Ant Farm,” a mobile, three-inch-long base of operations designed with the shrinking technology of Professor Ray Palmer. And unlike the deputized Frankensteins and artificial wolfmen of the past, the modern-day Commandos are led by the actual Frankenstein’s monster. This Frankenstein wields a sword, studies Shakespeare, and has lived a rich and storied life since his 19th century resurrection in the laboratory of Doctor Victor Frankenstein. (He also doesn’t mind if you call him “Frankenstein.”) 

Backed up by a Man-Bat serum augmented Vincent Velcoro, a truly lycanthropic Warren Griffith, an aquatically augmented Dr. Nina “The Mermaid” Mazursky, the ancient resurrected mummy sorcerer Khalis, and, as often as not, the former Bride of Frankenstein, the greatest tension in modern-day dispatches of the Creature Commandos is rarely so much as whether Project M will pull out another victory against overwhelming odds, but whether Frankenstein and his Bride can reconcile their tumultuous past and unearth their buried romance once more.