You may be the familiar with The Losers from their 2010 movie starring Idris Elba, Zoe Saldaña, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Chris Evans, but that version of the team was based off the comic book series published under DC Comics’ Vertigo imprint. Before they came along, the original incarnation of The Losers operated during World War II within the main DC universe, and now this team has received the opportunity to shine on their own in a DC Showcase animated short film. That said, I learned from writer Tim Sheridan that there was one classic DC character who he was excited to include in the proceedings, but ultimately didn’t make the cut.
Following its original release as a bonus feature attached to Batman: The Long Halloween — Part One last year, The Losers is now included in the DC Showcase — Constantine: The House of Mystery compilation, along with the title extended short, Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth! and Blue Beetle (the latter of which also spotlights other Charlton-era characters). I had the pleasure of speaking with Tim Sheridan about his work on The Losers, and when I asked if there were any major moments he had to be removed from the short due to time constraints, he had this to say:
I was so sad that we ended up having to cut a character that I just had so much fun writing. She didn’t have a ton of stuff to do, but every time she spoke in the thing, she was my favorite character. And it was Mademoiselle Marie, who was this great DC character who fought in the French Resistance. We thought she would be a great addition to this team, and we just made her a real badass of a character. Of all the hardened war veterans on the team, she was the one who was just non-nonsense, cutthroat, right to the point, better at war than all of these dudes. So I really loved having her in there, but it came down to every time she would crack a joke or do a thing, it was great, but it kind of stopped the movie. And we weren’t on the path to get to the thing that we needed to get to. Unfortunately, that’s what happens. That’s what storytelling is, that’s what moviemaking is. You have to make tough choices like that, and we decided we had to cut that character. I will regret it. I’m pushing for my Mademoiselle Marie short someday in the future [laughs].
Introduced in 1959’s Star Spangled War Stories #84, the original version of Mademoiselle Marie was a French resistance operative who was a love interest to Sgt. Rock (who scored his own DC Showcase short back in 2019, which Tim Sheridan also wrote) and, in the pre-Crisis continuity, had a daughter named Julia with Alfred Pennyworth, Batman’s trusty butler/father figure. In later years, Mademoiselle Marie became a codename that’s been passed around to many women over the centuries, with the most recent version, Josephine Tautin, using the name as part of her work with the the covert operations agency known as Checkmate. While the original Mademoiselle Marie didn’t have any ties to The Losers in the comics, Tim Sheridan was keen on including her in this animated short, and she would have been the most formidable member of the team.
Had Tim Sheridan been able to keep Mademoiselle Marie in The Losers, this would have been her second animated appearance, as she briefly showed up in 2008’s Justice League: The New Frontier. However, as Sheridan laid out, her moments in the DC Showcase story halted its momentum, and eventually he decided to take her out. My fingers are crossed that someday Sheridan gets to spotlight Marie elsewhere, whether it’s in her own animated short or another kind of ensemble story. As far as the final version of The Losers goes, it was directed by Milo Neuman and stars Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. actress Ming-Na Wen as Fan Long, Dean Winters as Captain Storm, Martin Sensmeier as Johnny Cloud, Eugene Byrd as Henry “Mile a Minute” Jones and Dave B. Mitchell as both Gunner and Sarge.
You can see what kind of craziness unfolds on Dinosaur Island in The Losers by picking up DC Showcase — Constantine: The House of Mystery on Blu-ray and Digital from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment starting tomorrow, May 2. Don’t forget to also read Tim Sheridan’s thoughts on how Matt Reeves’ The Batman drew from the Batman: The Long Halloween storyline (as Sheridan wrote the two-part Long Halloween animated adaptation), as well as keep checking back with CinemaBlend for all sorts of updates concerning DC movies.
