History Creator / ChaosComics

One or two of its franchises do occasionally still see print after being auctioned off to other companies. ComicBook/LadyDeath, who [[BreakoutCharacter quickly eclipsed Evil Ernie in popularity]], is currently in series published by [[Creator/AvatarPress Boundless Comics]]. There have been various attempts to revive the company's other flagship characters, the most successful of these so far being the use of Evil Ernie as an AntiVillain in ''ComicBook/HackSlash''.

Chaos! Comics was a comic book publisher that operated from 1994 until 2002. Founded by Brian Pulido, it originally began as a vehicle for ''Evil Ernie'', his idea for a movie turned comic book about an undead teenage serial killer who spearheads a ZombieApocalypse while goaded on by a supernatural being called ComicBook/LadyDeath, but it expanded into its own shared universe with multiple characters and titles. A company that specialized in ultraviolent horror, {{gorn}}, and dark fantasy with mostly VillainProtagonist and AntiHero characters, Chaos! is still generally remembered as kicking off the "[[BadGirlComic Bad Girls]]" fad of '90s comics and being a prime example of the excesses of UsefulNotes/TheDarkAgeOfComicBooks - not that these are necessarily bad things.

Lesbian Vampire: Purgatori targets beautiful young ladies to feed and also pines over her arch-enemy Lady Death. Justified as she was a lesbian before becoming a vampire.

* {{FromNobodytoNightmare}}: Purgatori started out as a slave in ancient Egypt, Lady Death was the unhappy and helpless daughter of a Swedish knight, and Evil Ernie began as just an abused teenager in the suburbs of New Jersey.

* FromNobodytoNightmare: Purgatori started out as a slave in ancient Egypt, Lady Death was the unhappy and helpless daughter of a Swedish knight, and Evil Ernie began as just an abused teenager in the suburbs of New Jersey.

* ArtisticLicense–History: Purgatori's origin story refers to the city of Alexandria, but it's clear that it takes place in the second millennium BC when Alexandria wasn't founded by Alexander the Great until 331 BC. If you're feeling charitable, you could say that they're referring to Rhacotis, the native Egyptian city that Alexandria was built around. Also Egypt's tombs and pyramids were built by paid workers, not slave labor, although to be fair this is still a widespread misconception.

* And I Must Scream: Once she's turned from an Egyptian slave girl to a pissed off vampire/demon, Purgatori returns to her former lover, the queen who tried to kill her, and the husband she was willing to kill her for and seals them both in a tomb...after she's turned them into vampires.

** Chastity

** This was especially pronounced in Chastity's case. While she remained a vampire assassin, in her first appearances she enjoyed killing innocents for fun. Later on, in her origin story, we find that she didn't even kill her abusive father; she only humiliated him to end his abuse of her and her mother, something uncharacteristic of the Chastity we see in her earliest appearances, making this something more of a {{Retcon}}.

** In-universe there's Homicide, who goes from fanatically wanting to share Evil Ernie's "gift" of being undead with all of humanity to wanting to create a world where both the living and the undead can coexist by destroying Evil Ernie.

* WholePlotReference: The ComicBook/LadyDeath / BadKitty crossover is an entire reference to ''Theatre/RomeoAndJuliet'' with the Capulets and the Monatgues replaced with cops and a Mafia family.

%%* BiggerBad: The Chaos Lord Armageddon.

* TheDragon: Homicide was this to Evil Ernie...until he became the first zombie [[HeelFaceTurn to break free from his control]] and decided that Evil Ernie's quest to bring Lady Death to Earth endangered even the "life" of the undead.

** Evil Ernie wants to kill everyone in order to bring Lady Death to Earth, but he also wants to make ''everyone'' pay for his abusive childhood and the fact that as a telepath he knew his neighbors refused to help him.
** Lady Death wants to wipe out humanity for her freedom to return to Earth, but the fact that she's still mad that she was burned at the stake as a witch in the Middle Ages for healing plague victims and because her father happened to be a Satanist is an added bonus.

** Even Evil Ernie was disgusted by a few sociopathic teens who tracked him down because they admired his mass murdering ways and wanted to be turned into his undead lieutenants. Naturally he killed them all, but punished their leader by killing him while letting him know he was ''not'' going to be turned into a zombie.
* EvenTheGirlsWantHer: Lady Death generally pulls three reactions from women: seething jealousy, attempts to destroy her, or... (And they're not mutually exclusive!) In Purgatori's case, she wanted to seduce ''and'' destroy her.
* EvilVersusEvil: Pretty much every Chaos! Comics battle for most of the company's history until the final years when most of their protagonists softened up. Even the zombie serial killer Evil Ernie's archenemy, Dr. Price, tended to be a bit of a sociopath who had outbursts that resulted in things like the ''assassination of the President.''

* SlasherSmile: 90% of the time that Ernie has a smile on his face, it's one of these. And he smiles a ''lot.''
* VillainProtagonist: One of the things that made Chaos! stand out was that they were completely and unabashedly all about this trope in their heyday. For examples, ''Purgatori: The Vampire Myth'' told Purgatori's origin story with a framing narrative about her in the modern day seeking to kill two ancient vampires she accidentally created to replenish her power, and ''Evil Ernie: Destroyer'' had an ''entire storyline'' about him wiping out the population of Atlanta with his zombie army and trying to initiate a nuclear holocaust. But in the company's latter years their protagonists, especially Chastity and Lady Death, became more traditional heroic protagonists, although Purgatori and Evil Ernie stuck pretty close to their original characterizations. In a letter to fans in the last issue of ''War of the Dead'' which was (originally) meant to be the end of Evil Ernie, Brian Pulido does claim he always thought of Evil Ernie as "the bad guy" and planned from the start that he would be killed by the "heroine" Mary Young.

** Evil Ernie

%% ZeroContextExample entries are not allowed on wiki pages. All such entries have been commented out. Add context to the entries before uncommenting them.

One or two of its franchises do occasionally still see print after being auctioned off to other companies. ComicBook/LadyDeath, who [[BreakoutCharacter quickly eclipsed Evil Ernie in popularity]], is currently in series published by Boundless Comics. There have been various attempts to revive the company's other flagship characters, the most successful of these so far being the use of Evil Ernie as an AntiVillain in ''ComicBook/HackSlash''.

* BigBad: Lucifer actually kind of became this, at least for both Lady Death and Purgatori.
* BiggerBad: The Chaos Lord Armageddon.

* BloodbathVillainOrigin: Bloodbath ''protagonist'' origins, too.
* BloodIsTheNewBlack:
* BloodSplatteredInnocents:
* BrainInAJar:

* BulletproofHumanShield:

* EyeScream:
* FreakOut:

* GoodAngelBadAngel:
* GoodEyesEvilEyes:
* {{Gorn}}: And how.

* {{Woobie Destroyer of Worlds}}: {{Evil Ernie}}.

* DisproportionateRetribution: Evil Ernie wants to kill everyone in order to bring Lady Death to Earth, but he also wants to make ''everyone'' pay for his abusive childhood and the fact that as a telepath he knew his neighbors refused to help him.
** Also Lady Death wants to wipe out humanity for her freedom to return to Earth, but the fact that she's still mad that she was burned at the stake as a witch in the Middle Ages for healing plague victims and because her father happened to be a Satanist is an added bonus.

* EvenEvilHasStandards: Lady Death tended to have a pretty strict code of honor, which often was the only thing making her more moral than her nemesis Purgatori. She also, despite being behind an attempt to carry out the mass murder of the entire human race, genuinely cared about the souls of the dead and was outraged when she learned that Heaven and Hell have been harvesting the dead for millennia for their own purposes.

* EvenTheGirlsWantHer: Lady Death generally pulls three reactions from women: seething jealousy, attempts to destroy her, or... (And they're not mutually exclusive!)
** In Purgatori's case, she wanted to seduce ''and'' destroy her.

* VillainProtagonist: One of the things that made Chaos! stand out was that they were completely and unabashedly all about this trope in their heyday. For examples, ''Purgatori: The Vampire Myth'' told Purgatori's origin story with a framing narrative about her in the modern day seeking to kill two ancient vampires she accidentally created to replenish her power, and ''Evil Ernie: Destroyer'' had an ''entire storyline'' about him wiping out the population of Atlanta with his zombie army and trying to initiate a nuclear holocaust. But in the company's latter years their protagonists, especially Chastity and Lady Death, became more traditional heroic protagonists, although Purgatori and Evil Ernie stuck pretty close to their original characterizations.
** In a letter to fans in the last issue of ''War of the Dead'' which was (originally) meant to be the end of Evil Ernie, Brian Pulido does claim he always thought of Evil Ernie as "the bad guy" and planned from the start that he would be killed by the "heroine" Mary Young.

Chaos had licensing deals to handle Wrestling/{{WWF}} characters and the ''Franchise/{{Halloween}}'' franchise, a pretty sizable fan community - affectionately called Chaos Fiends - and arguably one of the earliest comics fan communities to really make use of the Internet. Sadly, they were a casualty of the crash of the industry in the late '90s/early '00s.

One or two of its franchises do occasionally still see print after being auctioned off to other companies. ComicBook/LadyDeath, who quickly eclipsed Evil Ernie in popularity, is currently in series published by Boundless Comics. There have been various attempts to revive the company's other flagship characters, the most successful of these so far being the use of Evil Ernie as an AntiVillain in ''ComicBook/HackSlash''.