DC’s Creature Commandos are making a big comeback this December with the release of a brand new animated series written by James Gunn. The show (the first trailer for which was recently released) marks the new DCU series’ first appearance on the big screen. Before that, however, the monster team is returning in a brand new comic book written by Late Night With the Devil star (and creator of Count Crowley) David Dastmalchian and drawn by artist Jesús Hervás.
We recently caught up with Dastmalchian to talk about his film career, but also took the opportunity to learn more about the comedian, which the actor describes as “something I’ve wanted to do since I was a kid.”
A lifelong comic book fan, Dastmalchian says the tone of DC Horror Presents: Creature Commandos is “a pretty serious and dramatic military monster story,” inspired by JM DeMatteis and Pat Broderick’s Weird War Tales comics. He also revealed that the title will feature a familiar face from the larger DC Universe. “Luckily, I have access to these characters that I’ve always wanted to play with and incorporate, and I felt like Zatanna would be a really great heroine for the story. I’m so excited! The art is so cool!” He also described Jim Lee’s alternate cover as “the sickest thing I’ve ever seen!”
Dastmalchian further confirmed that the series not a connection to the new animated series. In fact, he was worried for a while that the existence of the show might lead to the cancellation of his comic. “James is one of my best friends, and when he told me he was going to work on the animated series, I was pretty sure my comic would never see the light of day. But he said, ‘No, they can exist in separate worlds.'”
Creature Commandos isn’t the only new comic Dastmalchian is currently working on. Knights Versus Samurai will be his first title for Image. “People ask, ‘Oh, is this based on something?’ And I say, ‘Yeah, knights! And samurai! Two of my favorite subjects!'” The series will be drawn by Federico Mele, and Dastmalchian describes the new book as “set in a fantasy world where dragons and oni and witches and all kinds of mythological monsters from Western and Japanese mythology collide.” He added, “We’re going to explore how these warrior classes and these various monsters and creatures were split by a really clever elite class, and they start to break through the illusion of differences between them through magical means of communication, and they start to see what they might have in common.”
Knights Versus Samurai #1 will be published by Image on September 25th, with DC Horror Presents: Creature Commandos #1 hitting stores the following week on October 2nd.
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