Battle Chasers

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Battle Chasers, published by Image Comics, was artist Joe Madureira's take on a sword-and-sorcery comic, sometimes deadly serious and sometimes with tongue planted firmly in cheek, or in Red Monika's case....cheeks. Five individuals were brought together by fate, which in this instance, is defined by accidentally releasing a multitude of that world's most heinous evildoers, and they end up becoming a most unlikely and reluctant band of heroes.

It ran from 1998 to 2001. Today, the series is better-known as a punchline for Madureira's infamous lateness and for late comics in general.

The Battlechasers team proper consists of:

  • Gully -- She's the daughter of the legendary warrior Aramus, and possibly the most adorable human child alive. She begins the series trying to protect a strange box she received from her father from a pack of werewolf assassins who killed her caretakers. The box contains her father's magic gloves that grant superhuman strength and invincibility; when she's forced to put them on, even she's able to beat up building-sized demons with ease. But still, the gloves may be too big for her figuratively as well as literally.
  • Garrison -- A master warrior and swordsman, who wields a powerful mystic sword a la Excalibur that can cut through anything. He begins the story as a drunken wreck mourning the death of his bride-to-be, but he takes up his sword again after learning that the daughter of his mentor, Aramus, has vanished...
  • Knolan -- An ancient, powerful, insufferably sarcastic wizard who can manipulate the elements. He was apparently a member of an older party of adventurers whose past was coming back to haunt them. Near the "end" of the series, it was implied he was running low on time.
  • Calibretto -- An ancient "War Golem", effectively a massive walking Magitek weapons platform filled with cargo bays worth of kill-stuff. Also a "pacifist", and nature lover, who was staying with Knolan before rescuing Gully from her pursuers in the first issue.

Tropes used in Battle Chasers include: