David Dastmalchian Conquered the Comic Book World On Screen, Now He’s Focusing On His Own

A few years ago, David Dastmalchian was with longtime friend James Gunn, getting ready to travel to a bachelor getaway before Gunn’s wedding.

He was excited to tell his friend that he’d landed a job writing a Creature Commandos comic for DC. Little did Dastmalchian know, Gunn — soon to be named head of DC Studios — was already working on his own take on Creature Commandos as an animated TV show about the team of monsters.

“He goes, ‘Look!’ He already had animatics and footage from his animated series,” says Dastmalchian, who worked with Gunn on The Suicide Squad. “I was afraid maybe my comic series would get canceled, because it’s a different Creature Commandos than what James is doing, and he said, “No, no, no. It’s totally fine. It exists. And certain publishing stories can exist separately.”

Creature Commandos is just one of eight comic book projects Dastmalchian will unveil in the coming year or so. It’s an eye-popping number for any writer, but it is all the more impressive given that comic books are Dastmalchian’s side gig. He is best known as the prolific character actor who has jumped between Marvel and DC in movies like The Dark Knight and Ant-Man, and who has worked multiple times with directors such as Denis Villeneuve and Christopher Nolan.

In between film and TV projects, Dastmalchian has spent the past few years building up his comic book portfolio, starting out as the creator of the Dark Horse horror comic Count Crowley: Reluctant Midnight Monster Hunter. A third volume of the well-liked series will arrive in trade paperback later this year.

Coming up, he has the high-concept Image Comics book Knights vs. Samurai, which takes place in the late 1500s. It involves magic and dragons, and pits English knights against Japanese Samurai … until the men realize their leaders have lied to them, and they should actually be working together. The book drops in September, and counts Spawn creator Todd McFarlane as a guiding light for Dastmalchian on the series. Thersa Matsuura, a Japanese mythology expert and host of the podcast Uncanny Japan, serves as a consultant.

Because he’s known as an actor, at times folks in the comic book industry might have assumed he was interested in doing comics as a vanity project, not as a hands-on creator.

“I often feel like I walk into the first meeting with people having their guard up,” says Dastmalchian. “Hopefully by the time I’ve talked at them for five or 10 minutes, they realize that I’m a true comic nerd who really loves this stuff and has a deep passion for it.”

Other upcoming projects include working on the anthology DC Horror Presents, which features horror tales from the DC universe.  “We’re getting to use a classic Batman villain, but in a really twisted, gory way. And more importantly, this villain’s daughter who hasn’t appeared in a lot of comics yet,” says Dastmalchian, who teams with frequent collaborator Leah Kilpatrick on it. The duo are also writing an entry in the Dark Horse Horror special the Headless Horseman, a tale he describes as a tribute to The Creature from the Black Lagoon. He also has a project with the new company Panick Entertainment.

Dastmalchian wrote much of his work during downtime on movie and TV sets, and he hopes to see them translated for other mediums some day: “I dream of projects like Knights vs. Samurai, Count Crowley, and so many others that are finding their form on the page of comics, eventually taking shape in film, television, gaming, or other spaces that we haven’t even known or coming yet.”

Below is a Jim Lee cover for Creature Commandos.