Context

The Chaos Riders were part of the Comics’ Greatest World (now renamed Dark Horse Heroes). Appearing in 1993, it was Dark Horse Comics’ stab at having their own fully-featured super-hero universe.

I quite liked them – they are ominous and tough, and while at first glance they seem straightforward they are both much more and far less than they appear.

Background

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Powers and Abilities

The Chaos Riders are highly coordinated, very strong, very hard to destroy, and armed to the teeth. They also have a talent for mysteriously disappearing at the end of a scene, such as driving into a dead end or over an unfinished bridge… and vanishing.

The Riders are actually the psionic  creations of coma ward patient Toby Klein. When they were destroyed, the psionic feedback that hit Klein took out his life support equipment and triggered a blackout in Arcadia.

History

The Chaos Riders are four criminal bikers who made themselves quite a reputation on the East Coast. As mercenaries go they are expensive, but highly threatening and efficient. They never failed in their assignments, except for the final one.

This occurred when Arcadia’s top crime lord sent them against the Mayor. The vigilante known as X intervened. Even X failed to destroy the Riders by detonating a tanker truck loaded with propane. But he eventually succeeded after leading them in an area he had saturated with hidden high explosives.

The comatose Toby Klein was electrocuted by the psionic backlash, but survived since he was already in an hospital. He stayed comatose but lost his ability to create psionic manifestations for a few months.

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Making friends at the hospital

Later, due to budget cuts, patients had to be lodged two in a room. Toby’s new neighbor was the paralyzed Coffin.

A few weeks later, the new Arcadia crime lord, Christy, started eliminating all security risks. He thus sent men to unplug Coffin from his life support system. As Coffin was dying, Toby physically manifested as a Chaos Rider. He then created a psionic form for Coffin as his physical body died.

The two set out to avenge themselves against Christy and X. Coffin almost killed X twice during his short existence as a mental construct. However, X understood what was going on and killed the comatose Klein. This destroyed Coffin’s psionic form and ending the threat of the Chaos Riders.

Personality

The Riders are completely silent and faceless. Their telepathic talk sounds like a wind without origin, a voice from nowhere like old leaves rustling, a breath just beyond earshot… Even then they “say” few things.

Quotes

“Nothing can stop us. Nothing can break or destroy us.”

DC Universe History

The Chaos Riders are an implacable, unstoppable nightmare for street level heroes. Isn’t that nice ?

In the Marvel Universe, a fight between the Riders and Ghost Rider would, of course, be cool :-).

By Sébastien Andrivet.

Source of Character: Comic’s Greatest World (Dark Horse).