Late Night with the Devil’s David Dastmalchian heads up a starry writing team for a new series based on Kolchak, the paranormal investigator who inspired The X-Files

Ace reporter Carl Kolchak was investigating all things paranormal long before FBI agents Mulder and Scully ever opened their first X-File… The character, played on screen by Darren McGavin, first appeared in TV movie The Night Stalker, which was later followed by a sequel and a series, where he encountered everything from zombies and aliens to Jack the Ripper. Now Newsarama can exclusively reveal that Kolchak is back, in a new three-issue series from Monstrous Books, created by some of the biggest names in horror comics. 

Each issue of Kolchak Meets the Classic Monsters will be a self-contained story penned by a different writer and artist. The first, Kolchak Meets the Werewolf and Count Crowley, is written by actor and writer David Dastmalchian and sees the reporter encounter both a werewolf and Dastmalchian’s own monster hunter, Count Crowley. It will be drawn by Lukas Ketner and colored by Zac Atkinson, with covers from Ketner and Matt Wagner.

“One of the biggest inspirations for my character, Jerri Bartman aka Count Crowley is Kolchak,” said Dastmalchian in a statement. “I love nontraditional heroes who are thrust into harrowing and thrilling circumstances because of fate. I always hoped there would be a world in which these two monster-hunting journalists could cross paths and I’m over the full moon that it’s happening here on the pages of a comic drawn by none other than Lukas Ketner. Prepare, monster kids! The werewolf is loose in Chicago and Kolchak’s going to need some help if his hat isn’t going to be shredded to pieces.”

The second issue, Kolchak Meets Dracula, will be written by Killadelphia’s Rodney Barnes, another long time Kolchak fan, and drawn by Alex Lins, with a cover from Colton Worley. Barnes said of the issue, “It’s an honor to once again enter the terrifying world of Kolchak: The Night Stalker. Never feels like work!”