Creature Commandos

Essential as the formal opening of the DCU, and it is an odd front door: a seven-episode adult animated series rather than a film. James Gunn wrote every episode himself, which is the clearest possible signal of how the new continuity intends to work, and it requires nothing before it.

The premise is the Suicide Squad idea moved sideways. Amanda Waller can no longer legally use human prisoners, so she assembles a unit of monsters instead: a Frankenstein's creature, a bride who despises him, a weremammoth, a sentient robot and a talking severed head in a jar. They are sent to a fictional European monarchy under threat.

The structure is the best thing about it. Each episode stops the mission to tell one character's origin as a self-contained short, and several of those are genuinely upsetting, particularly the Bride's, which spans two centuries of a woman's life. The series is much sadder than its premise promises.

It is also very violent and very funny, in the register Peacemaker established. Several characters here recur in later DCU productions, so it does real continuity work despite being animated and easy to dismiss. Seven episodes, around three hours.