“It Was All a Dream Come True” – David Dastmalchian Raises Creature Commandos From Their Graves

After starring in a number of DC Comics film and television adaptations, actor and filmmaker David Dastmalchian is now writing for DC Comics himself with DC Horror Presents: Creature Commandos. Launching this October, Dastmalchian is joined by artist Jesús Hervás to tell the bloody tale of the DC Universe’s biggest monsters recruited by the government to embark on black ops missions around the world. Near-impossible to control, the Creature Commandos quickly find themselves fighting for the fate of the universe while learning to work together in spite of their fearsome nature.

In an exclusive interview with CBR, Creature Commandos writer David Dastmalchian talks about finding the humanity in between the book’s blood-soaked thrills, reflects on his extensive and growing history with DC properties and teases what fans can expect when Creature Commandos launch in time for Halloween.

CBR: David, the Creature Commandos are like The Dirty Dozen meets The Monster Squad.

David Dastmalchian:
That’s the perfect description. I love that. It’s the
Dirty Dozen
of Universal Monsters and the gloves are off because this is
DC Horror Presents
. They let me push the boundaries far and gave me a lot of support in the exploration of these complex, complicated characters with ideas that I wanted to play around with. It’s taking the stuff that I loved about the Creature Commandos as a kid, which was a really awesome badass group of monster soldiers who kick Nazi ass. They were so cool to me as a kid but, in 2024, where does that story go?

The ideas and way in which I felt we could make this something that a contemporary reader would be excited about, as well as
pushing the envelope with violence and the horror, it was all a dream come true for this monster kid and comic book nerd.

The DC Universe has its own version of vampires, Frankenstein’s monster and other familiar monsters. How did you want to differentiate these characters from things like Bela Lugosi or Christopher Lee Dracula, and lean into the unique aspects of these characters in this universe? The scene of them recruiting their vampire in the first issue is a standout.

Inspired by another DC title,
I, Vampire
, and inspired by my own original struggles and battles with addiction issues, I thought that Vincent Velcro could be somebody who, in order to protect himself from the abject depression he feels, as someone who is so alone in this world, and yet he can’t exit this world. The pain and suffering that he’s experienced in the past makes him this avoidant loner who gets by, by performing murder for money. It was a pretty fun way to take somebody that seems pretty irredeemable and give him an opportunity for our readers to get to like him because he has a wicked sense of humor and is a real pain in the ass.

Turn that thing that makes him monstrous, that is an affliction, and this thing that is his addiction, into something that could possibly, just maybe, help him find meaning, value or purpose in his life. That was really fun for me. The way we get to introduce him is really unique. It pays a lot of homage to classic ragtag military stories where you have to put together this team of people who work for our government. It’s a really secret program run by Doctor West that our government needs to keep very secret.

But these are monsters, so they’re unwieldy. At the end of the day, they’re going to wreck all kinds of havoc against an enemy without any kind of code of ethics. If, for some reason, they get caught or their mission fails, it’s quite simple for the government to go “They’re monsters! They’re not with us!” and they’d just get rid of them.

How was it writing a team book and making sure each character shines? You’ve written ensembles before and starred in a DC ensemble, working with James Gunn on The Suicide Squad.

I’m glad that you brought up James because I learned so much from his style of storytelling. There’s never a drop of paint wasted
in a James Gunn story
. There’s never a drop of ink that’s not without purpose in a James Gunn story. Every character must have deep meaning and purpose. They’re there to connect with, elevate, advance or restrain the journey of the other characters around them. For me, with this team who come from all these different walks of life, the one thing that unites them is the fact that they’ve spent their lives afflicted with something that makes them, for all intents and purposes to the rest of the world, monstrous, horrifying and disposable. They are evil but, within them, whether they admit it or not, lies this aching to find someplace where they belong, someplace of purpose.

What’s really fun at the beginning of my story is that we’re going to meet everyone rather quickly, and they are not going to play nice. These are people with wicked tempers who have really crazy, unruly conditions that cause them to turn them into a wolf, a bat, a raging reanimated monster of body parts or a gorgon. Imagine seeing a pissed off Medusa next to you going into battle. It was really fun for me because, just like siblings do, these folks really get on one another’s nerves, and yet they come to realize when they walk into the hell of war that the army does not have their backs.

As much as Doctor West loves them, she can’t save them. If they don’t have each other’s backs, they’re screwed, but there’s something more to it than that. As you start to get further into the story, you’ll realize what that thing is.
I’ve always loved found family, the concept of finding your people when you’re out in the wilderness.
That’s what’s going to slowly start happening for the Creature Commandos, if they don’t kill each other first.

Like any good ’80s horror movie, the military can be as adversarial as the monsters. How did you want to have General Eiling and the military challenge the Creature Commandos?

Because the Creature Commandos, in their original comics, were a division of the U.S. military led by Lieutenant Matt Shrieve, who treated them like absolute garbage. I wanted to bring that back into the story. I wanted the feeling that these beings, while they are serving a purpose each for their own reasons and intention of why they’re participating in this program, they’re treated so poorly. What was important for me with the General and what members of the U.S. Army Futures Lab and the Pentagon who do know about this, which are very few people.

It’s very important that the missions that this unit is embarking on can never be known by the public, but more importantly, can never be known by the Justice League. If the Justice League was to find out what Eiling is attempting to do here, they would go directly to everybody and need to get to the bottom of this.
The stakes are very high for everyone involved, including the puppet masters.
You think that they’re in control, but they’re not. They’re just as scared as the people who see a troop of monsters coming at them.

How is it working with Jesús Hervás, Alex Guimarães and Ferran Delgado, seeing those new pages coming in?

It is the best feeling. I get an email with an attachment from Katie Kubert, my editor, who is a legacy at DC with deep connections to Creature Commandos herself and has been the best shepherd for this project. She’s such a monster kid, and she loves this world so much. I’ve been really lucky. She brought the team together. I told her through my vision boards and look books what I was hoping to conjure with the world, but I didn’t ask specifically for artists because I feel like the editors are the best to do that, and she just nailed it. Whenever I get an email with all of us on the thread and I open it and see layouts, with inks and colors, it’s nuts. It’s so cool, and I can’t wait for people to see it because it’s really a pretty gory book and so fun.

You have your own growing DC legacy, appearing in The Dark Knight, The Suicide Squad, Batman: The Long Halloween and in the Arrowverse on The Flash.

I’m not trying to be facetious here, but I think this might be a fun exercise: I was a henchman to the Joker in
The Dark Knight
. I was Dwight Pollard, a henchman to the Joker on
Gotham
. I was Abra Kadabra, one of the great members of the rogues’ gallery, on
The Flash
. I had the opportunity to voice
Calendar Man in
The Long Halloween

, which is one of the greatest arcs of Batman ever told; I think Jeph Loeb is a genius. I also had the opportunity to portray Mr. Freeze in
The Doom That Came to Gotham
, that Mike Mignola version of what 1920’s Gotham would’ve looked like. In the Justice League/
RWBY
crossover, I got the opportunity to play The Flash. In
The Long Halloween
, I also did a brief stint as the Penguin. With
The Suicide Squad
, I got this great gift to my life to be Abner Krill, the Polka-Dot Man.

There are a few more that I can’t even tell you about. There is one that I am dying to tell you about. Just to eliminate any online rumors, it is not
in the Gunn-Verse
. This is something that is out of leftfield that blew me away when it came into my reality. Take that and combine it with the fact that, since I was a kid, I’ve been reading and collecting DC Comics ranging from the Justice League, Red Tornado, Firestorm and
I, Vampire
. I used to love doing these cover sketches when I was a kid. It was that really wonderful, special time when all of these awesome, weird heroes would come together. Now, here I am writing a comic that’s going to be in local comic shops around the country. Jim Lee himself did a variant cover.

In the next couple of days, if anybody wants to be entered [in the contest], we’re giving away an exclusive print of the variant cover signed by Jim and myself, as well as a bunch of other really cool items. Todd McFarlane signed a variant of my
Knights vs. Samurai
.
We’re going to put it in a bundle and mail it to you if you win the lottery.
Anybody that puts the comics that I have coming out in September on their pull list at their local comic shop gets entered. All you have to do is tag yourself and your local comic shop on Instagram and say you put these on your pull list and you can win. Going to my local comic shop as a kid and falling in love with DC is one of the great memories of my childhood and great gifts of my adulthood.

David, this has been a great year for you and horror, with horror comics and the movie Late Night with the Devil earlier this year. What do you enjoy about playing in the horror genre, especially in the comic book medium?

Horror is such an incredible genre and medium through which we can look into the mirror, out the window, under the bed, and we can collectively confront the things that scare us the most about one another, about this life, about ourselves.
In the safety of the creative process that goes into making a comic book, I get a chance to take great risks while being surrounded by artists, editors and support staff
who help bring this from my imagination, my heart and the places that scare me out into the joy of getting it in the hands of readers and being on the shelves of local comic shops. It’s really pretty special, and I don’t think Zatanna herself could conjure up any more magical feelings that I get from the fact that
Creature Commandos
is going to be read soon by kids and grownups alike.

DC Horror Presents Creature Commandos #1 goes on sale Oct. 2 from DC Comics. The series is written by David Dastmalchian, illustrated by Jesús Hervás, colored by Alex Guimarães and lettered by Ferran Delgado.