Chaos! Comics Is Back: Purgatori and Chastity Return in New Omnibus Collections – Collectors Confessions

Chaos! Comics Is Back: Purgatori and Chastity Return in New Omnibus Collections

By Chad Farley | Collectors Confessions

If you were a comic book fan in the 1990s and you liked the more rock ’n’ roll side of independent comics, then you definitely bought some Chaos! Comics at your local comic shop.

While superheroes dominated much of the comic-book industry, Chaos! Comics offered something different. Its books were filled with supernatural horror, larger-than-life characters, outrageous artwork, and an attitude that felt more like a heavy metal concert than a traditional superhero adventure.

Characters like Evil Ernie, Lady Death, Purgatori, and Chastity became familiar faces to collectors who wanted something a little darker and a lot louder.

And the man behind much of that Chaos! Comics phenomenon was Brian Pulido.

Now, more than three decades after those characters helped define an era of independent comics, Pulido’s Coffin Comics and Dynamite Entertainment have joined forces to bring the original stories back to readers in a series of deluxe omnibus collections. Their latest project puts two of Chaos!’s most recognizable characters in the spotlight: Purgatori and Chastity.

We recently welcomed Brian Pulido back to Collectors Confessions to talk about the return of Chaos! Comics and the new collections. For those of us who remember discovering these books in the 1990s, the project is a chance to revisit a distinctive chapter in comic-book history. For newer readers, it offers a way to discover stories that have become increasingly difficult to find in their original editions.

Two Characters, Two Very Different Kinds of Chaos

Although Purgatori and Chastity share the same supernatural universe, they approach it from very different directions.

Purgatori is a powerful, crimson-skinned vampire whose stories revolve around blood, ambition, betrayal, and the pursuit of greater supernatural power. She first appeared in Evil Ernie: Revenge #1 in 1994 and went on to become one of the defining characters of the Chaos! Comics line.

Chastity, meanwhile, brings a punk-rock attitude to the world of vampires and monsters. A young woman turned vampire, she becomes a hunter of other supernatural beings rather than simply accepting her place among them. Her stories mix horror and action with the rebellious personality that made Chaos! Comics stand out on the shelves.

For collectors who followed these characters when their comics were first released, their appeal went beyond the costumes and dramatic covers. They belonged to a shared world where horror, fantasy, and action could collide—and where the characters were rarely interested in playing by anyone else’s rules.

Bringing the Original Stories Back Together

One of the challenges of collecting 1990s independent comics is that the stories are not always easy to track down.

You might find one issue in a comic shop’s back-issue bins, another at a convention, and a third through an online seller. Completing an entire storyline can turn into a collecting project of its own.

That is part of what makes the new Purgatori and Chastity omnibus campaign interesting. Rather than asking readers to hunt down the original issues individually, the project brings the classic material together in oversized hardcover editions curated by Pulido.

The collection is planned as three volumes: two devoted to Purgatori and one to Chastity, with more than 1,500 pages of material across the books. The editions are designed to give readers a more complete way to experience the characters’ original adventures, while offering longtime collectors a new presentation of stories they may remember buying one issue at a time.

The campaign also offers multiple collector-focused editions and upgrades, including signed options and slipcovers. It is the sort of presentation aimed at readers who want these comics not only to read, but also to keep on their shelves as part of their collections.

A Return That Fans Have Been Waiting For

The Purgatori and Chastity project follows the earlier collaboration between Dynamite Entertainment and Coffin Comics to collect the classic Evil Ernie stories. Together, the projects form part of a broader effort to bring the original Chaos! Comics library back into print.

The response to the new campaign suggests that these characters still have an enthusiastic audience. According to Dynamite’s reported figures, the Purgatori and Chastity Kickstarter reached its initial funding goal within 66 seconds and passed $100,000 within two hours of launching.

That response is a reminder of how strongly collectors can connect with the comics they grew up reading.

For some fans, these omnibuses will bring back memories of visiting their local comic shop in the 1990s and discovering a cover that looked unlike anything else on the rack. For others, this may be their first opportunity to sit down and read the original Purgatori and Chastity stories in a substantial collected format.

And that is one of the things I love most about comic-book collecting: a book can take you right back to the moment you first discovered it, while still finding an entirely new audience years later.

More Than a Trip Down Memory Lane

It would be easy to look at these collections as nostalgia for the 1990s, but I think there is something more to them.

Comic-book history is not limited to the major superhero publishers. Independent companies helped shape what the medium looked and felt like, and Chaos! Comics was part of that story.

Its books had their own visual identity, their own approach to horror, and a group of characters who connected with readers looking for something outside the mainstream.

By bringing the classic Purgatori and Chastity stories back together, this project gives readers an opportunity to experience that period of comics without having to spend years searching through back-issue boxes.

Of course, if you’re anything like us here at Collectors Confessions, you’ll probably keep digging through those boxes anyway. After all, you never know what you might find.

But it is good to know that a new generation of readers will have another way to discover the characters that made Chaos! Comics such a memorable part of the 1990s.

Purgatori and Chastity are back—and the Chaos! Comics vault is opening once again.

Watch Our Full Interview With Brian Pulido

Want to hear more about the return of Chaos! Comics and the Purgatori and Chastity omnibus collections? Check out our full interview with Brian Pulido on Collectors Confessions:

Banner Image: Chaos! Comics interview. Image Credit – Collectors Confessions