JAMES GUNN’S NEW vision of the DC Universe—or, the DCU—has finally begun in earnest. We’re three episodes into Creature Commandos, and it’s easy to see how the world is being established as one where superheroics and strange, borderline sci-fi happenings are have long been normalized (as opposed to a grounded world where Superman arrives and changes everything). That’s not super surprising; the premise of Commandos is that Amanda Waller (Viola Davis, reprising her role from the old DCEU) tasks Rick Flag Sr. (Frank Grillo) with leading a team of not-quite-human beings. Off the bat, we’ve go to accept that the likes of Dr. Phosphorous (Alan Tudyk), The Bride (India Varma), G.I Robot (Sean Gunn), and Eric Frankenstein (David Harbour), among others, are just a part of this world.
The people in Creature Commandos accept it, and as a result, so do we. Part of what’s fed into what people have described as “superhero fatigue” is that we keep seeing the same origin stories over and over and over again; Gunn clearly wants to mostly skip that part and just get to the good stuff.
And that’s mostly what’s happening here, though Creature Commandos episode 3, titled “Cheers to the Tin Man,” spends a good amount of time getting to know G.I. Robot—a high-tech android from WWII who’s lone objective is killing Nazis. While his high-tech weaponry initially bails out his friends in the Easy Company during the war, he quickly becomes a sideshow in the years following the war; think Steve Rogers at the USO shows selling War Bonds in Captain America: The First Avenger. G.I. Robot doesn’t quite have functioning social skills, so he’s not a great fit for this.
Where he is a great fit, though, is his advanced technology. So, when he’s being paraded around, he gets one very important fan: Dr. William Magnus (also voiced by Alan Tudyk). Magnus is a scientist, a self-proclaimed AI expert (preferring that term to ‘robot’), and takes G.I Robot to his lab for studying. He’s enamored with G.I. Robot, believing that at his core he’s got a bit more humanity than his lone objective of killing Nazis would seem to let on.
While G.I. Robot doesn’t dive too much deeper than his urge to kill Nazis, he does express how he wants to be reunited with his boys from the Easy Company. Magnus isn’t too concerned about that, though, but he wants to use whatever he can find about G.I. Robot to build a new wave of automaton.
What does that mean? Let’s dive in.
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Who is Dr. William Magnus in DC Comics?
In short, Dr. William Magnus is a longtime character in the DC Comics universe (and all other variations), first appearing way back in April 1962’s Showcase #37. He’s a brilliant scientist, known throughout the DC Universe for his expertise in robotics; he also occasionally has to deal with severe mental illness.
DC Comics Metal Men: Elements of Change
But Magnus’s biggest contribution is that he’s the creator of a superhero team of robots called the Metal Men (who also first appeared in that same Showcase #37 issue). Magnus himself doesn’t have any special powers, outside of his extreme intellect; think of him as something of a parallel to Dr. Franklin Storm (Sue and Johnny’s father) in Marvel’s Fantastic Four, or like if Reed Richards was just smart and distant, but didn’t have any powers.
There are a number of different members of the Metal Men team, but the initial lineup was six robots: Gold, Iron, Lead, Mercury, Tin, and Platinum.
The Metal Men have continued to appear throughout the years in the DC Comics continuity, and it’s easy to imagine a world where they pop up in this new version of the DCU.
What does this mean for James Gunn’s new DCU?
A Metal Men project as part of Gunn’s DCU slate hasn’t been announced yet—the most recent is a Clayface film written by Mike Flanagan—but with this tease, it seems pretty clear that it’s going to come at some point, one way or another. This is a clear tease, and with this series written by Gunn himself, it’s obviously done with intention.
The fact that a Metal Men project hasn’t been announced doesn’t mean they can’t show up elsewhere, either. The scene with Magnus takes place 20 years after WWII ended, but he seems just on the verge of a breakthrough; they could pop up at any point.
Maybe that’s in the upcoming Sgt. Rock film, which was recently announced to be directed by Luca Guadagnino and is set to star Daniel Craig? The most recent and notable comic for the Sgt. Rock character actually finds him taking on a bunch of Zombies (and is actually written by Bruce Campbell himself). Could that be a spot for Metal Men and even G.I. Robot to pop in? Why not?
William Magnus is voiced by Alan Tudyk
Magnus is voiced by Alan Tudyk in his brief scene; Tudyk also voices Dr. Phosphorous in Creature Commandos and is set to voice Clayface at some point when he appears in the series (he also voices a different version of Clayface in Max’s Harley Quinn series).
While Tudyk is clearly a talented voice actor—and he’s done a lot in that realm—he’s also a fantastic live-action performer as well. In recent years, he’s played the lead on a series called Resident Alien, while he’s also well known for his role as Steve the Pirate in Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story and as Wash in TV’s Firefly and its film sequel Serenity.
A scroll through Tudyk’s IMDB page is always a fun time—He was Sonny in I, Robot! He was in A Knight’s Tale! He was the droid K-2SO in Rogue One!—and you’ll almost always be delighted and surprised to see a couple things he’s been a part of.
