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I don’t think it’s unfair to say that some people might be a little confused about how “new” the new onscreen DCU actually is. After all, everything starts fresh with December’s Max series Creature Commandos, but that series… is technically a sequel to both 2021’s The Suicide Squad and 2022’s Peacemaker spin-off…? Talking at New York Comic Con 2024, DC Studios co-chair (and writer/director of The Suicide Squad, Peacemaker and Creature Commandos) James Gunn explained how DCU canon officially works. Kind of.

“Well, I mean, it's really, for me, it's a first and foremost about story,” Gunn told the crowd at the Javits Center during the Saturday afternoon panel. “We don't want anybody coming to Creature Commandos and going, 'Oh, you have to watch The Suicide Squad to understand what happened to Creature Commandos! Oh, you have to watch Peacemaker!' We want people to be able to come in this totally blind and they're totally excited by it. So there's nothing that isn't explained in the show itself. However, there are references to some other things that happened in the past, and those things then become canon in the DCU, because we mentioned that in this show. So we have references to Peacemaker situations. We learned a little bit that, you know, your son died. We learned that, you know, other things that have happened in the past in other media have still happened.”

As confusing as that might seem on first blush, it’s actually more straightforward than it seems. Basically, nothing is actual canon outside before Creature Commandos… although versions of other, earlier shows and movies might have happened, but they will not be considered canonical until they’re referenced explicitly in the new canon.

Or, to put it another way: Creature Commandos is the new status quo, and everything else is someone else’s misremembering of earlier events and about as reliable as your untrustworthy older cousin telling you things when you were a kid.

Creature Commandos — and the new onscreen DCU — starts December 5 on Max. And then things continue in… a comic book, of all places.

Look out for more from Creature Commandos (and the NYCC panel for the show) on Popverse in the days and weeks ahead.

Relive New York Comic Con 2024 with Popverse's all-star crew of writers, editors, and video producers right here.