‘Creature Commandos’ Got Animal-Vegetable-Mineral-Man and Crimson Centipede

In his first foray into the DC universe in 2021’s The Suicide Squad, James Gunn proved once again that he has a taste for the obscure and unexplored corners of the comics company’s vast library. In the film’s bravura opening sequence, Gunn introduces the latest incarnation of the Suicide Squad, with characters like Javelin (Flula Borg), who wields javelins as weapons; Savant (Michael Rooker), a combat and weapons expert; and The Detachable Kid (Nathan Fillion), who can, well, make all his limbs fall off at will, only for nearly the whole team to be brutally and hilariously dispatched.

These might seem like the products of Gunn’s particularly depraved imagination, but as it turns out, they’re all real DC characters. Some of them may have only made a few appearances back in DC’s more wacky days, when comics writers were willing to throw pretty much anything at the wall to see what stuck. And what’s more, there are plenty of others that Gunn chose not to include. In the last episode of Creature Commandos, two more such deep-bench villains made a brief appearance in the background, a quick little Easter egg for comics fans. But who are these two weirdos?

Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man

The two characters in question don’t have any lines, but instead merely glare out from their cells as G.I. Robot (Sean Gunn) is taken into Belle Reve prison after massacring a meeting full of neo-Nazis. One of these is particularly striking, a man with a T-Rex’s head growing out of one side of his face, a tree branch in place of his arm. This is Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man, a shapeshifting character first introduced in the original Doom Patrol all the way back in the 1960s.

In his default form, Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man appears just as he does in Creature Commandos, with the T-Rex head and tree limbs on one side, with his other arm and leg made of diamond, covering all the bases implied in his name. His real name is Sven Larsen, a Swedish scientist who develops shapeshifting abilities after falling into a vat of amino acids (as one does). Suffice it to say, he’s not the most prolific villain, but he’s made appearances in the animated series Batman: the Brave and the Bold and the live-action Doom Patrol series. Whether he’ll actually have a moment to shine in Creature Commandos, only time will tell.

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Crimson Centipede

Possibly even stranger than Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man is his neighbor, a glowering multi-armed man in a red suit. This is Crimson Centipede, an even more obscure villain who originally appeared in Wonder Woman comics back in the ’60s (was there something going on in the ’60s that gave artists some strange ideas?). Created by the God of War, Mars, to cause trouble for Wonder Woman, he mainly robbed banks to fund criminal enterprises. He did manage to give Wonder Woman a run for her money, defeating her in their first two encounters.

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In this early version, he’s something of an insect/human hybrid, man-sized with green skin and multiple arms; his early appearances show him being able to fire about eight guns at once, which would probably come in handy in a bank robbery. Later incarnations made the character much more terrifying than his original design, more monstrous and grotesque. This version, appearing in a 2017 Wonder Woman comic, was created by a S.T.A.R. Labs unit looking to combine species for military applications. Over the years, he’s made the occasional appearance in other series, but seemingly never outside the comics before. Leave it to James Gunn to dig up such an obscure character for a visual gag.

The background appearance of these two characters is just another example of Gunn’s deep love of the world he’s bringing to the screen. He’s worked wonders with previously overlooked characters in his Guardians of the Galaxy and Suicide Squad films, and Creature Commandos is the latest in a long line of these projects. It’s not yet known if either Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man or Crimson Centipede will appear on the show again, or if their appearance in episode three was just for a sight gag, but it wouldn’t be at all surprising if they pop up in Gunn’s DCU again at some point. Stream on Max.