Posted in: Max, Movies, Opinion, TV, TV | Tagged: creature commandos, dc studios, dcu, opinion

Creature Commandos: Gunn Series Offers Equal Opportunity Fridging

Serving as our first look at James Gunn and Peter Safran's New DCU, DC Studios' Creature Commandos made "fridging" a universal trope.

Creature Commando finished its first season and has been renewed for a second season, which is significant for James Gunn since it's the first official entry in his new DC universe for future film and TV projects. It's also a chance for a soft launch and testing ground for the tone and tropes of the new DCU. Gunn has said he's always felt more affinity with DC than Marvel and wants to bring an updated interpretation of the comics he loved to a modern TV and movie universe. What's notable so far is that there seems to be so much across-the-board "fridging" in play…

"Fridging" was originally coined by our favourite Comics Queen of Snark, Gail Simone, to describe a trope where the hero's girlfriend or wife is violently murdered by a bad guy to drive the hero to a rage that makes him fight the bad guy and even take revenge. In fact, you could easily notice that, over the years, the books written by women don't do a fridging – it's very much a male writer's thing.

Creature Commandos has that in spades – but in the New DCU, that's no longer restricted to just wives and girlfriends. What Gunn has identified as the common factor in DC characters, good or bad, is that they're driven by personal trauma – in many ways, more than Marvel characters are. Having a loved one murdered is a traumatic event, and Batman is the Trauma Drama Queen of the whole DC Universe – he's entirely driven by his parents getting fridged, two for the price of one! Virtually all of his rogues gallery consists of characters who were traumatized – trauma that would lead to their power and supervillain identity as the defining factor of their character. That's the whole team in Creature Commandos.

Again, Gunn is an Equal Opportunity fridger – so it's not just a male character's wife or girlfriend that gets fridged to motivate him, but the female characters' fathers, lovers and friends too. Oh, and the characters' children. In terms of murdering kids, the DCU seems to be willing to go places the MCU doesn't. It's a harsher universe than the MCU, even though for decades, DC was frequently considered brighter and more optimistic – even duller – than Marvel.

The DC Universe of Fridging Isn't James Gunn's Idea – He's Just Making It Universal

Gunn feels that DC characters are richer in nuance and uses Creature Commandos as the first proof of concept for his DCU. The real test for his DCU will be the new Superman, and you can already see hints that his Clark is partly defined by emotional pain and trauma. But the underlying theme, which Gunn also established in his Suicide Squad movie and the Peacemaker series, is that the heroes and antiheroes still forego their pain and do the right thing for whatever "greater good" that might be out there, which in the end is a positive and aspirational message. We still don't know what Gunn's version of Wonder Woman, Aquaman, The Flash, or Green Lantern will be like or how much trauma will be part of their makeup, but don't be surprised if it shows up. We're pretty sure the fridging will continue. It's not Gunn's original idea – far from it. DC Comics has been doing it for decades. He's just redefining the trope so that no one is left out when it comes to inspiring heartbreak and pain.

Creature Commandos is streaming on MAX.

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