Weird War Tales #93

History

Writer J. M. DeMatteis first conceived the idea of government-created monsters fighting Nazis while pitching short anthology stories to editor Paul Levitz in the late 1970s, but the DC Implosion of 1978 derailed the pitch before it could be greenlit. When editor Len Wein took over Weird War Tales and House of Mystery and decided to inject both titles with ongoing serialized features, DeMatteis dusted off the dormant concept; Wein embraced it immediately, and together they settled on the name 'Creature Commandos.' Pat Broderick was brought in to design the characters and illustrate the debut story, with John Celardo inking and Adrienne Roy coloring, and the cover was provided by veteran DC war-comics artist Joe Kubert. DeMatteis himself would later step back from the feature fairly quickly, with prolific war-comics writer Robert Kanigher taking over the scripting duties and shepherding the team through the remainder of Weird War Tales' run until cancellation in 1983.

Trivia · 8 facts

• First appearance and origin of the Creature Commandos, introduced via Project 'M' — a secret U.S. military program that bio-engineered soldiers into horror archetypes for use on suicide missions against Axis forces.
• Original debut lineup: Lt. Matthew Shrieve (the human handler), Sgt. Vincent Velcro (vampire), Pvt. Warren Griffith (werewolf), and Pvt. Elliot 'Lucky' Taylor (a Frankenstein-style patchwork soldier reconstructed after stepping on a landmine).
• Written by J. M. DeMatteis, penciled by Pat Broderick, inked by John Celardo, colored by Adrienne Roy, and edited by Len Wein; the cover was drawn by Joe Kubert.
• The inaugural story sends the Commandos to a Nazi-occupied French castle, where they uncover and destroy android duplicates of Allied leaders — including FDR, Eisenhower, Churchill, and Stalin — built to serve as Third Reich sleeper agents.
• The issue was part of the larger Weird War Tales anthology, which ran from 1971 to 1983 (124 issues) and blended science fiction, horror, and war genres, hosted each issue by a skeletal personification of Death.
• The Creature Commandos went on to appear in approximately 18 stories across Weird War Tales, with later issues scripted by Robert Kanigher, and the feature ran all the way through the title's final issue (#124), ending with the team launched into deep space on a runaway rocket.
• The issue exists in multiple contemporary distribution variants: a direct-edition (bagged/comic-shop) copy and a newsstand barcode edition, as well as a UK 15-pence price edition, reflecting DC's expanding 1980-era distribution infrastructure.
• The Creature Commandos were adapted as the inaugural project of James Gunn's rebooted DC Universe: an adult animated series on Max (debuting December 5, 2024), making this issue the root source material for the first entry in an entirely new DC continuity.

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