Chaos! Comics

DIrishB

The Timeline Guy
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Anyone remember Chaos! Comics? They were one of many of the new upstart comic publishers that arose in the early 90's, and were best known for their characters Evil Ernie, Lady Death, Purgatori, Chastity, etc. They were the biggest impetus for the "bad girl" cliche that became popular in the mid to late 90's. They also were known for their many #0, #1/2, Prelude, Versus and One-Shot issues. And of course, the ridiculous amount of variant covers and crossovers with other companies (notably Harris comics Vampirella on several occasions).

I first started reading them as a twelve old, originally buying a trade collection of the first Evil Ernie mini-series. As a pre-pubescent kid who had read mostly Star Wars and Batman comics, I really liked the supernatural horror aspect to the EE books. I then ordered the other existing EE trades and eventually the couple Lady Death trades that were out. I began following their books that followed their internal continuity (Evil Ernie, Lady Death, Purgatori, Chastity, etc), and it was my first real exposure to noticeable continuity. I never had any interest in the various (and ludicrously idiotic) books based on WWF wrestlers they did (because wrestling is stupid). And then there were some Insane Clown Posse series. Really? I do suppose it appealed to a large portion of their "audience", but I couldn't stomach the ludicrousness of the general idea, let alone have any interest to ever read those.

Now, to be honest, the writing was pretty lame, overall. I didn't realize it at the time, being 12 (it also makes me wonder how I was able to buy issues each month often featuring overly sexualized women on the cover--way beyond the "norm" for most comics--and extensive, graphic violence within) but as the years wore on and I smartened up and was exposed to better comics and literature, I realized how inherently shallow the books were. While I still had a soft spot in my heart for Evil Ernie, I was turned off by the over-sexualization and illogically skimpy outfits most of the female characters "wore".

So by the time I was in high school in the late 90's, I kept buying the core books, but was enjoying them less and less. Eventually I gave up on the books entirely, sometime before the Armageddon crossover they did at the end of 1999.

But I just recently stumbled upon a torrent of the Chaos books and DLed them for old time's sake. One of the few positives of the line is Steven Hughes artwork on the early titles, and the extreme "gray area" exploration of titles entirely populated with villains and anti-heroes created and written by Brian Pulido.

I also realized it was largely Star Wars and the Chaos comics that got me interested in doing timelines. Now I can blame George Lucas and Brian Pulido for that.

Anyway, did anyone else ever read these? Stuff like:

Evil Ernie
Lady Death
Purgatori
Chastity
Chaos! Quarterly
Cremator
Homicide
The Omen
Suspira
Bad Kitty


Anyway, by 2002 (2-3 years after I'd stopped buying and reading their stuff), Chaos tanked and went bankrupt. They sold off their properties, which have been revived and rebooted by other companies (Lady Death is still being published and thankfully wearing more clothing in the modern titles, and Evil Ernie came back briefly in the mid-2000's for a 4-issue mini series and a crossover with Hack/Slash).

So yeah, I'm reading through it again now. The early stuff isn't terrible, but I have a feeling by the time I get to the late 90's/early 2000's stuff, I'm going to be rolling my eyes regularly. There is an admitted charm to the Evil Ernie and Lady Death series, though.
 
Evil Ernie sounds familiar but I was out of comics by the late 90s and before that I wasn't reading anything that wasn't Marvel.
 

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