Hey, folks: Come see me on Saturday, Oct 25th at Four Color Fantasies in Winchester, VA for the shop's Halloween event. I'll be signing and sketching. I'll bring art and stuff to look at. It's my first out-of-town signing in at least 8 years.
Four Color Fantasies, Winchester. 2,221 likes · 74 talking about this · 574 were here. Thirty plus years and counting of bringing the joy of
Huh, until I saw this it kind of dawned on me that the Doom Patrol concept is very Venture Bros coded isn't it? The idea of a scientist mentor who is actually responsible for the accidents that disfigured the team while also giving them superpowers is something pretty much straight from that show, even if Caulder's behaviour predates the show by a good chunk of time.
...What a second, is that Jeffrey Combs as Niles there? And Clancy Brown is Negative Man!
My DC Cinematic Universe - Creature Commandos: Part X
Chapter Ten: Loathing. Unadulterated Loathing.
This. This is maybe the dumbest decision that this series makes. Ilana Rostovic, Princess of Pokolistan is far-and-away the thing that I despise the most about Gunn's Creature Commandos, and as you've seen if you've been reading this now TEN CHAPTER ESSAY SERIES, there's a LOT I dislike about this series. But no, it's the princess that I hate the most. And why? Look, at this point, if you haven't see the series or been spoiled on it, I will be ruining the entire series for you very quickly, so my suggestion is that you not read past the jump if you don't want to be completely spoiled.
I'll just say here that Ilana's role completely degrades that of several characters. She makes Amanda Waller look like a fucking moron, Rick Flag Sr. look like a major creep and a simp, Circe look completely goddamn useless, and Nina...Nina. Goddamn it, look, there's not a lot more I can say about this character without spoiling the show, so even though it's early on, let's put the jump in here. I'll also tell you now that I'll be discussing a decent idea for a villain (I think, anyway), and thoughts on the plot of my ideal Creature Commandos series, so if that's enough for you to brave the series-breaking spoilers, I'll see you after the jump.
Oh, uh, and be ready for my pure, useless, overpowering nerd rage. You've been warned.
HOW ON GOD'S GREEN EARTH IS ILANA THE SEASON'S VILLAIN???
Let's start this rant with a quick recap and assessment of Ilana's plan, which simultaneously doesn't exist and is too thorough, somehow. Ilana's goal? Take over the world with her soldiers at the forefront. And how does she accomplish this? First, get the USA to send the Creature Commandos to take out Circe, who figured out your plan. Then, seduce Flag to get him on your side in order to get him on your side to kill Circe for you. Flag won't do that, but then, assuming that when Circe was captured by the US and rightfully would tell someone of your plan to take over the world, hire Clayface to discredit her as a source by pretending to be the exact expert on Amazonians that Amanda would hire, by anticipating that choice...somehow. And then...profit? Without us having any idea how she would do this, or why, for that matter, she would partner with Gorilla Grodd, at bare minimum, then take out the Justice League and every other hero that could stop you, and then...again...profit???
What? Why? What was even the point of you doing this? There is literally, literally, no explanation. And sure, maybe she's insane. Sure, not every villain have a true reason for doing the awful things they do, or maybe we don't need to know what those reasons are to believe her as a credible threat. BUT THIS IS WAY TOO FUCKING MUCH TO NOT ACTUALLY EXPLAIN ANYTHING!!! And what's even worse about this, is that there is no reason why you couldn't have used an actual DC Comics villain, instead of an original character whose only purpose is to fuck Rick Flag Sr. and look like an innocent princess, oh, AND KILL NINA MAZURSKY FOR NO FUCKING REASON
I...just...this is incredibly stupid. And like I said before, it cheapens a boatload of other characters in the process. Now, in this spoiler-filled zone, I can elaborate on that statement.
Rick Flag Sr., to some incredibly minor credit, tries to resist Ilana's seduction attempts, and fails basically immediately. She turns on the sexy charm, and they have sex the night they first meet. And doing that, yes, is weird because of the inevitably uncomfortably age gap between them (still hate that), but also makes Flag, a dedicated military man and intelligence officer with years of experience under his belt, an easily manipulated simp with no common sense or personal agency outside of his dick. So, as said before, Flag is a simp at best, a creep at worst, and a gullible idiot no matter what.
Amanda Waller continues her losing streak, playing right into Ilana's hands somehow, even if she bucks expectations and sends the Commandos to kill Ilana, correctly. But she also proves to be easily manipulatable, because Circe actually could have been lying! The right thing to do in this instance was to fuck off and ignore the situation, and why exactly did Waller get involved again? Because she can't goddamn help herself, that's why.
Circe is a failure. I said this in the last essay, but why in the hell didn't she just kill Ilana with FUCKING MAGIC?!? Instead, she stages this absurd invasion of the mansion, complete with decoys and red herrings, and only then tells somebody else what the fuck is going on, and waits so fucking long to do so, that Ilana somehow has the chance to contact and hire Clayface to replace the Amazon interpreter to discredit her. JUST GIVE FLAG OR THE BRIDE THE VISION BEFORE LEAVING FUCKING POKOLISTAN!!! WHY IS EVERYBODY SO GODDAMN INCOMPETENT IN THIS SHOW???
Nina is a pawn to establish Ilana as evil. And to be clear, we didn't need to kill Nina to do this, but Gunn introduced her seemingly to do just that. And also, that doesn't even make sense, because technically, ILANA ACTED IN SELF-DEFENSE!!! Even if she WAS evil, killing Nina in this instance was actually justified, because Nina was ABOUT TO KILL HER!!! And if Ilana wasn't actually evil, her killing Nina STILL would've made sense! Maybe this is where we were meant to question whether or not Ilana was evil, sure, but...again, killing Nina isn't necessary for that to be established. What a waste.
But OK, making Ilana a villain could still work, right? I mean, maybe actually have her explain her plan a bit, or at least her motivations that would eventually lead her to becoming a major villain. Or hell, maybe she's being manipulated by somebody else, or she's actually another villain in disguise or linked to somebody else. You know what, we can fix this! Let's just use one more episode to explain what's up with her, maybe stage a major final showdown where she explains her motivations and ideology, and then
GOD FUCKING DAMMIT
SHE'S DEAD??? SHE'S JUST FUCKING DEAD NOW WITH ABSOLUTELY NO EXPLANATION FOR WHY OR HOW SHE WAS GOING TO KILL THE ENTIRE JUSTICE LEAGUE AND TAKE OVER THE WORLD??? WHAT THE HELL WAS EVEN THE POINT OF HAVING THIS RANDOM-ASS CHARACTER BE THE BIG-BAD OF THE SERIES IF YOU'RE GOING TO TELL US NOTHING ABOUT HER??? GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
I am...ugh. I am frustrated. There is more to this problem, but I just don't understand why Gunn would invent a new character, and such a poorly-fleshed out character on-screen, instead of use a DC character with known motivations, or at least provide motivations for Ilana, if you absolutely have to use her. I can think of a few reasons for Gunn's insistence, which are as follows:
Gunn likes actress Maria Bakalova. He had previously been a fan of her in the second Borat film, which is understandable, and then cast her as Cosmo in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and the Holiday Special, and she is a fitting actress for the role, doing a fairly good job in it as well. Butthat doesn't quite explain the invention or usage of the original character, or neglecting to flesh her out as more than just a pretty face with unexplained ambitions.
Gunn wanted to surprise the fans with a villainous twist. This is assuming a good proportion of watchers would be comic book fans, expecting Circe to be the villain instead of this absolute rando. Well, uh...comic book fan here, and all you accomplished was pissing me off and ruining several characters in the process, including poor Circe, who I wanted to see as the villain. And that's still not an excuse to not give her connections to known characters, or motivation of literally any kind. Plus, if the villain was Circe or another canon character, comic book fans would've been excited to see an iconic character adapted by you somehow. Misguided (and failed) attempt to throw comic book fans off.
Create a new original big bad for the Gunn-led DC Universe. She's dead. You killed her. Moving...what a second.
OH GODDAMN IT SHE GOT FRIDGED
It took me this long to see it, but...fuck me, Gunn actually put two women in refrigerators in this show, in two different ways, for the same person's motivation! Nina was killed by Ilana, serving as motivation for the Bride, sure. But then, Ilana was motivation for Flag to do all of his useless bullshit, fueled mostly by his dick, while she also became motivation for the Bride to shove her into that refrigerator!!! The deaths of both women served as motivation for the Bride, making them women in refrigerators. Holy shit. He did it twice.
And OK, I recognize that this is a somewhat loose definition of that term, but you gotta admit: Ilana's purpose in this show was to die. The entire point of her actions were that the Bride would eventually kill her in order to show her devotion to Nina, whom she had killed. Her life was a pawn sacrificed in the service of the Bride's character development. That is fucking heinous. Especially because there were so many other options for villains, or even for usage of Ilana herself. I'll prove it. I'll give you three pathways here, instead of the "purist vs. creative" options I usually use. You'll see which one I prefer, but I bet I can make this better.
The Villain: Ilana Rostovic
So, here's the thing. Initially, I was about to present alternate ideas for the villain of a Creature Commandos series, with fixing Ilana as one of the entries. And then...something happened. I started writing the whole thing up, and I realized something that I'm actually in love with. So, I may propose other villains in a later entry, but the following massive section is about fixing Ilana herself. And honestly...this might be my favorite answer for the question of villain for this series.
In this section, we'll use Ilana as out major villain for the series, and a twist villain with enough time to establish herself. We'll also assume that we have no extra episodes of the series, so we'll establish her in the time that we know the studio agreed upon. We also won't assume the team she's going up against, because that actually shouldn't matter too much. The Commandos are going up against Ilana at the end of this series, and while individual storylines have taken place throughout depending on the roster, the ending climax is still broadly the same. The only assumption we will make is that we aren't using Enchantress. Other than that...how do we do this?
First things first, if we want to make the princess a twist villain, then the Creature Commandos need to be brought in by the ruler of Pokolistan...Queen Rostovic. Yeah, we meet the queen in Gunn's series, but she's decrepit and mentally infeeble to the point of basically being dead for all intents and purposes. In this revision, the queen is the one that the Creature Commandos are brought in by, in order to deal with a threat to her throne in exchange for access to a unique military technology, interesting the Untied States government. This tech is a Cold War holdout, adapted and updated with modern technology to form a unique and formidable weapon. Because what in the hell was up with the Amethyst Knights? You know, the security force of Pokolistan? They're just kinda...there, with very little explanation. Instead, let's explain them by relating them to a DC Universe connection: the Rocket Red Brigade.
Given that Russia in the DC Universe has continued to develop the Rocket Reds as an armored and weaponized security force, getting access to this technology would be a pretty good motivation for the United States, and also has potential payoff later in this series. Anyway, what is the Queen of Pokolistan getting out of this? Easy; there's a conspiracy to kill her, and rumors in Pokolistan have spread of the Baba Yaga. At the very least, there has been magic used to threaten the queen's life, and her strength is being degraded by an unknown source, leading the superstitious queen to believe magic is involved. Which would sound insane, if it wasn't actually true.
Better minds than me could decide how to introduce the idea of Circe, but episode 1 would end with the introduction of a threat against the queen's life: a minotaur, sent after the queen to kill her, and fought off by the Commandos in episode 2. In the process, we also meet the queen's daughter, Ilana, in episode one, and get an idea of her ideology through her seeming admiration of her mother, and a snapshot of her own ambitions as queen one day. However, we also get the idea that perhaps the Queen's ambitions are less-than-good, and that the plot to kill the queen is more complicated than assumed. The Commandos, sent there to deal with a potentially arcane threat against the life of a potential ally, stumble into a supernatural political quagmire.
Now, in the last essay, I established this way to fix Ilana by making her an actual witch, and the one threatening her own mother with death and her magic. Now, she's threatened by the appearance of the Creature Commandos, and needs them eliminated while speeding up the time needed to kill her mother and inherit the throne for herself. She also needs to point the Commandos away from herself, and she uses her old teacher in the witch arts: Tala. See that last essay for more about this character, but we've reinvented her a bit into a Pokolistani witch who was Ilana's former teacher, then realized that her student had mad ambitions of conquest of the country and beyond, resulting in a fallout that saw Tala magically banished from Pokolistan by Ilana. Her threat, therefore, is real, but against Ilana rather than the Queen. It's Ilana who has engineered methods to make her mother the seeming target, rather than herself.
Tala also needs agents to act against Ilana from the inside, as she can't enter the country. So, she engineers conditions to get others involved, both slowing Ilana's plans down considerably, and heightening the chances that her plots will be uncovered and stopped. So, Tala engineers things that prompt the Queen to contact the Americans for help, in exchange for the Rocket Red technology. To do this, she uses her magicks to attract allies form the countries surrounding Pokolistan, and turn them into her own army of arcanely powered warriors that can pound on and degrade the banishing field around the country, allowing her to enter and dispatch Ilana, but also having things appear as a diplomatic emergency that would prompt the Queen to seek intervention, without causing actual war for the country or its surroundings. This version of Tala is evil in a very personal and selfish sense, and not interested in disrupting global balance for her own needs. In any case, the Commandos are brought in, and Ilana now has to deal with them, and speed up the timeline.
When the Commandos arrive, Ilana conjures a creature to kill her mother and engage the Commandos, making sure to make it appear as an emissary of Tala, rather than herself. I think I said a minotaur last time, but let's go more traditionally Eastern European and say something like a bauk instead. That way, we can actually see this as Ilana's familiar, disguised as an old stuffed bear in her quarters, and furthering an innocent image that belies her true nature. Once this put the Commandos after the witch on the border of Pokolistan, Ilana can speed up her slow killing and maddening of her mother, ensuring that her death will come while the Commandos are there to witness it. We get through some fights with Tala's forces, the breaking of the arcane seal around Pokolistan, and continued battles to save the Queen. All the while, the Queen of Pokolistan grows more and more unstable and ill, and in the middle of a raging madness in the back half of the series (like, episode 4 out of 7), collapses and dies in front of the Creature Commandos, and seemingly of a stroke or heart attack. Thus, Ilana is coronated "sadly" as the new Queen of Pokolistan, and sends the Commandos to bring Tala to justice, by whatever means necessary.
Episode 5 of 7. The Commandos, on command of the U.S. government and their Pokolistani allies, travels with the Amethyst Knights to engage and defeat Tala in her headquarters, a Baba Yaga-esque chicken-legged mansion. Many of the Knights with them fall, and the group engages Tala outside of the country. However, in the process, they find out the true target of her actions: Ilana. Upon that realization, the one or two remaining Amethyst Knights have a rune in their armor activated, as planted by Ilana in a recent cosmetic upgrade, and the armor transforms into a golem-like juggernaut meant to kill Tala and the Commandos. Additionally, after defeating the Knights, the group finds they can no longer enter the borders of Pokolistan, having had their arcane invitation revoked by Ilana, and also being banished from the country's borders with Tala. Now, Ilana can act with impunity, as the Queen of Pokolistan.
Tala shares her vision with the group, and the first half of episode 7 sees a flashback of Ilana's past, and an understanding of her actions over the course of the series, as well as her future ambitions and the reasons for them. We see fairly quickly that a young Ilana, with red hair in the flashback, is very much in love with the Grimm Brothers idea of being a princess, and has been since she was a child, seeing herself in the role of a fairy tale heroine held in place by a tyrannical queen and stepmother. Said Queen forces her to die her hair blonde, so as to be visually tied to the blonde Queen herself, who was revealed earlier in the series as her stepmother. When she meets Tala, the two recognize in each other power and potential, and Tala selects Ilana as the Maiden to her Mother. Over the years, she acts as the Merlin to the Princess, training her in the arcane arts as a tutor, with the Queen always wary of Tala. Over the years, Ilana's obsessions with fairy tales grew, and Tala became wary of a mental instability tied to arcane power. This led to their disagreement, and to Tala's banishing, as well as the escalation of Ilana's plans. All the while, throughout this flashback, we notice Ilana's tie to a specific book of fairy tales, given to her by her father many years before. And again, this seems to make her seem very innocent, as she's seemed through the entire series.
And that's the entire point.
OK, from here, the Commandos ally with Tala to take out the mad Queen. Tala reverse engineers the sigil on the armor of the Knights, and is able to break the banishment against her and the Commandos, allowing them egress. Ilana, now feeling comfortable with her power, and preparing herself for war against literal monsters, Queen Ilana transforms all of her loyal knights into powerful arcane juggernauts, and partners with her bauk familiar against the Commandos, who are acting somewhat against orders from the U.S. Government to take care of Ilana. Threats emerge throughout the forests surrounding the castle against the group, but they manage to make their way to Ilana for the final episode of the series, as she's coronated as the Queen officially. And as the group face off against her, Ilana taps into the magick she's kept restrained, and prepares to fight. All the while, she holds her special book in-hand, drawing both inspiration and idolatry. We also see that with her mother dead, Ilana's hair is red once again, as it is naturally. And yes...this is very important.
The Commandos and Tala get to the castle; a fight ensues with the Queen's Knights, backed up by Bauk and other monsters she summons and animates from her arsenal. We get some sick animation, epic monsters vs. knights stuff, it's just cool as hell. Tala, now able to get to Ilana to stop her power, finds to her surprise that the Maiden has grown impressively powerful in their time away. The link appears to be the book, through which she has formed some kind of arcane bond to extradimensional magicks that have given her power. The sigil she sent with the Knights was also an invitation, so that Tala could understand the power Ilana now wields as Queen. In other words, this is a problem, and the group begins to see that.
However, as they are on the brink of defeat, Tala comes upon a realization: the magic Ilana uses can be turned against her. Drawing from the armor of the Amethyst Knights, she empowers the Commandos with similar magicks, and they use this to defeat Ilana, using her own fairy tale logic against her to brand her the Evil Queen. This further turns the tide, transforming the magic she uses, as well as her own appearance subconsciously. Her red hair turns more of a blood red, her skin pales, and my ulterior motives as a comic book obsessive are finally revealed.
The Real Villain: The Queen of Fables
I have always been terribly upset about the lack of representation of the Queen of Fables in media, because this is maybe my favorite Justice League villain. You may be thinking: "Wait, isn't she Black and voiced by Wanda Sykes?" Yeah, that's the Harley Quinn version of the character, who almost worked, but honestly wasn't the Queen of Fables to me. They did get the broad strokes right, however. She's the literal Evil Queen from stories and fables, banished to a storybook by sorcerers long ago after her egress on Earth. Later iterations establish the Queen, AKA Tsaritsa, as an eldritch metaphysical entity also known as the Might Beyond the Mirror, representing the evils dreamt up by imaginations from the collective unconscious, brought to life and banished by the metaphysical embodiment of mythological good and imagination, Promethea. It's...it's actually pretty neat, but it's some New 52/Rebirth and Alan Moor stuff, if that helps explain it. But in any case, the Queen of Fables is a powerful Justice League villain...and what I see as an opportunity.
Ilana is marked with the brand of Evil Queen, physically and metaphysically, through the power of magic that comes from the realm of imagination and dream that exists in the DC Universe, and lashes out angrily as a result. However, this leads to her defeat by the Commandos, as Tala has exhausted most of her power for the time being, and all work together to turn her own banishment magic back upon her, using as a target the realm that she loved so very much: the Book of Fables. Banished to the book, she is placed in the role of the Evil Queen and Stemother seen throughout it, essentially sent through metaphysical space and time to become the Queen of Fables, and ironically bound to the book for all eternity...until the day that she's summoned into this iteration of the DCU, fully-fledged as the Queen of Fables.
The spells fall, the Knights are defeated, and Pokolistan is saved...and left without a ruler. Maybe we saw another character meant to take up the throne, maybe this has neighboring governments or the U.S. Government attempt to install their own ruler or take over the country during a time of political unrest. That's another plotline altogether. But the Commandos are victorious, Tala retreats to heal (and consult with another member of her coven, the Crone Morgaine le Fey as mentioned in the last essay), and Ilana Tsaritsa Rostovic (her only-now revealed full name) is within the Book of Fables, given to the Commandos and the government for "safekeeping". We'll see, of course, what happens throughout this iteration of the DCU; the Queen is likely to return.
And, uh...yeah, that's my incredibly self-indulgent method of fixing Ilana Rostovic: turn her into an actual established villains that's powerful, cunning, and dangerous in her own right. And all in seven episodes, even! Are there better options for this? Oh, almost certainly. Obviously, the Queen of Fables turn isn't fully necessary, just interesting to me personally (and probably a bunch of comic book fans), and you can still keep Ilana as the main villain with some tweaks. There are also other villains to consider, and I may do a post involving different potential villains for each of the Creature Commandos teams we've identified. In fact...let's do exactly that, while also molding the stories with these characters. Consider this past story with Ilana the main branch, using Ilana as the villain with heavy tweaks, and usable for any team of Commandos, including the original one seen in the actual series! But for the specific teams, let's look at some different options.
As a reminder, our team proposal line-ups are as follows:
The Purist Team: General Wade Eiling (military benefactor), Miranda Eiling (military liaison), Frankenstein's Monster (field leader), the Bride (field leader), G.I. Robot (J.A.K.E.), Scratch (Zachary Griffith), Nocturna (Natalia Knight), and Mermaid (Nina Rhodes)
The Creative Team: King Faraday (government liaison), John Brown and the ghost of J.E.B. Stuart (military liaison), the Bride of Frankenstein (field leader) and the Monster (field leader), G.I. Robot (J.A.K.E.), Man-Bat (Kirk Langstrom), Clayface (Basil Karlo), and Enchantress (June Moone)
For the Queen of Fables Plot, both teams work, but take out Enchantress for the Creative Team line-up; she'll be replaced by Tala in the series climax, and introduced in the potential second season of the series. As for the potential plots customized for these teams...we'll start with the Purist's Path, and use the power of legacy to establish this new iteration of the DC Universe in the present and the past, by using an enemy that represents the latter. And honestly...let's go nuts. And I mean Morrison nuts.
Part One: Introduction and Adaptation
Part Two: The Original Creature Commandos
Part Three: Amanda Waller and Rick Flag, Sr.
Part Four: The Frankensteins
Part Five: G.I. Robot
Part Six: Weasel
Part Seven: Doctor Phosphorus
Part Eight: Mermaid
Part Nine: Circe
Part Ten: The Princess
Part Eleven: An Alternate Story: Purist Team (next)
Part Twelve: An Alternate Story: Creative Team (soon)
