Dwayne Taylor, the heroic vigilante Night Thrasher, dedicates his life to uncover corruption and protect the public from malevolent menaces! Along his journey, he’s the founder and leader of the New Warriors, a group of Super Heroes who help him live his dream of defending the helpless from the deranged.
From Orphan to Super Hero
Dwayne Taylor is born an heir to wealth, power, social conscience and tragedy, though he forges all these legacies into his life’s mission as the vigilante Night Thrasher. His rich African-American grandparents are major civil rights activists who believe their wealth and celebrity make them targets, considering the rampant racism in society, and they try to ensure their family’s long-term security by funneling their money into diversified holdings and investments that eventually becomes the Taylor Foundation. Their son Daryl inherits their wealth and expands the Foundation into a billion-dollar business investment and charitable enterprises conglomerate. There is at least one skeleton in the Taylor closet, though: On a Chicago business trip, Daryl has a drunken affair with an unidentified woman who becomes pregnant, but he pays her a six-figure sum to keep silent and never acknowledges this illegitimate child. Meanwhile, Daryl’s wife Melody Ann bears a son, Dwayne.
Before Dwayne’s birth, Daryl Taylor serves a tour of duty with the United States military, during which he and his good friend Andrew Chord were members of an Asian-based combat unit nicknamed the “Half-Fulls.” When the Half-Fulls discover the ancient hidden temple of the Dragon’s Breadth cult, the cult’s leader Tai threatens the soldiers with her mystical powers, and demands that they marry the cult’s chosen women (a prophecy indicated that mating these selectively bred women with Westerners would produce uniquely powerful children better able to manipulate the energies of the cult’s Well of All Things, an interdimensional breach suffused with vast mystical energies). Daryl refuses to participate since he was already married, but the other soldiers agree to marry the women. Chord becomes happily married to Tai’s daughter Miyami, who bears him twins (a daughter and a son), but Miyami soon fakes the deaths of herself and her infant children to prevent their exploitation by the power-mad Tai.
Falling under the influence of Tai, who believes the Taylors’ son could replace Chord’s lost children in the Well of All Things pact, Chord renews his friendship with the Taylors. He becomes Daryl’s right-hand man at the Taylor Foundation, and is like a second father to young Dwayne. When Tai orders Chord to kill Dwayne’s parents, he refuses, but Tai mystically compels Chord to shoot Daryl and Melody dead in front of their horrified son. Tai mystically distorts and obscures Dwayne’s memories so that he retains the trauma of their murder but forgets the details (including the killer’s identity). Chord and Tai become Dwayne’s legal guardians and managers of the Taylor Foundation. They also act as Dwayne’s mentors, Tai teaching the angry youth emotional control while Chord teaches him both combat skills and personal morality. With their support, Dwayne spends his life training to become a crime-fighter, spurred on by the loss of his parents. At age 18, he inherits controlling ownership of the Taylor Foundation but continues to leave business details to Chord and Tai since he becomes preoccupied with his new vigilante pursuits, patrolling the streets at night in search of crime.
Unaware of their parentage, Chord’s long-lost children grow up to be Midnight’s Fire and Silhouette, superhuman fighters associated with the Concrete Dragons street gang. Using their powers to attack other gangs, the siblings soon form an alliance with Dwayne, who rechristens himself “Night Thrasher” on the spur of the moment in emulation of his partners’ more colorful names. The trio takes down several criminal gangs, notably the Steel Waves run by pyrokinetic drug dealer Tommy Ng, AKA Scorch, and Dwayne shares a passionate romance with Silhouette. Their partnership breaks up during a sting operation gone wrong when Dwayne restrains Midnight’s Fire from attacking an interfering policeman; while they struggle, Silhouette is shot. Slashing Dwayne’s face, Fire flees with the wounded Silhouette and vows revenge.
Being wounded by Fire and nearly burned by Scorch, Dwayne develops a high-tech armored battle suit with the assistance of Chord, who designs its exterior based on the combat garb of the Dragon’s Breadth temple guardians. Taylor wears the suit in action, starting with capturing Bruce Choy, the partner of the slain gangster, who had shot Silhouette. Taylor tosses Choy into the nearest police precinct with a note reading, “Thrashed by the Night!”
Martial Arts Master
Night Thrasher is greatly skilled in multiple martial arts, in particular a form of Escrima specializing in fighting with sticks. He is also an expert acrobat, a talented battle suit and small arms designer, a gifted amateur machine-smith with a knack for creating collapsible or miniaturized weaponry, and a highly capable computer hacker with an aptitude for cybernetics. Extensively trained in security counteraction, Taylor is proficient with crescent throwing darts, truncheons and firearms, and is an expert skateboarder with some experience as a snowboarder. Thanks to Tai’s training and mystical influence, his mind has a superhuman resistance to psionic or telepathic intrusion.
Night Thrasher usually carries a pair of titanium alloy fighting sticks, using them as handheld weapons or thrown projectiles. He sometimes wields specially modified versions of these sticks that can release spring-loaded lengths of wire for entangling opponents, climbing or swinging. His most recent costuming (a full bodysuit with a matching trench coat) is composed of a lightweight but extremely durable, impact-absorbing Vibranium mesh. Infrared optical lenses and a two-way radio communications system are built into his mask, and his boot soles contain miniature jet propulsion devices, enabling him to launch himself aloft for short periods. He also designs and wields various miniaturized high-tech weapons concealed within his suit, such as a sword that projected a blade of pure energy from a mechanical hilt; a huge mallet capable of crushing stone but weighing only three ounces and collapsible into a portable size for storage; and an expandable, multi-barreled machine gun and rocket launcher array that unfolds from beneath his coat as needed. Taylor has also been known to carry less exotic portable accessories, such as plastic explosives, napalm gel, cordite packs, magnesium flares, smoke pellets, incendiary caps, ball bearings, spur jacks, concussion grenades, lock picks, electronic lock-decoders and suction cups.
Though he gradually phases out their use, Night Thrasher wears armored battle suits composed of Kevlar/boro weave and a silicate-oriented fiber encased in a ceramic matrix (two layers, 8 mm and 16 mm thick). The suit’s cloth portions are composed of a micromail titanium nitride alloy, which Taylor also uses in some of his non-armored costuming. Bulletproof, fireproof and resistant to penetration by bladed weapons, the suit is sheathed in a wafer-thin LED casing that allows it to camouflage itself within its surroundings by altering its exterior color and surface decoration. Portions of the suit are also treated with an anti-friction coating. His helmet’s variable-setting goggles had infrared sights, telescopic lenses, image enhancers, magnetic resonance scanners and a camera attachment. His helmet also houses a self-contained breathing apparatus, a voice scrambler, an adjustable-volume miniature loudspeaker, a two-way radio communicator, scanning equipment, a parabolic sound enhancer, and a cybernetic link to his armor’s systems. How many of his old suit’s features were built into his later costuming is unclear.
His early battle suits usually carry two solid ironwood truncheons, which can be fired from projectors in his gauntlets at 800 feet per second. The forearm projectors can also fire flame-retardant foam charges, smoke/gas capsules and magnesium flares. His armor’s right forearm typically houses a titanium alloy spring-lock blade. The armor’s left forearm could release a length of Adamantium alloy garrote wire. The armor’s forearms were also sometimes outfitted with miniature surface-to-surface (STS) missile launchers, or miniature machine guns loaded with rubber bullets, or both. The armor’s right wrist contains an aerosol pepper sprayer. At least one of his armor’s fingers contains a diamond-bladed glass cutter, and his left gauntlet houses a mini-computer with a two-way audio-visual communication system. His armor’s backpack typically contains a collapsible glider chute, a larger central computer system (capable of linking with other computers), and a .45 caliber Uzi submachine gun. He usually carries a pneumatically fired “piton line” for traversing rooftops and other climbing needs. He often uses a fiberglass skateboard that doubles as a bulletproof shield and houses a retractable razor-sharp blade; the skateboard can be converted into a snowboard if necessary. This skateboard/snowboard can magnetically attach to the back of his armor when not in use.
Family Ties and Allies
Dwayne is born to parents Daryl and Melody Ann Taylor, who sadly perish at the hands of Andrew Chord, who is mystically compelled by the Dragon’s Breadth cult leader Tai to assassinate them. Tai distorts Dwayne’s memories of the incident and becomes his legal guardian alongside Chord.
When Dwayne’s alliance with Midnight’s Fire and Silhouette comes to an end, Dwayne seeks new allies, partly to aid his war on cre and partly to build a larger surrogate family for himself. Chord and Tai encourage this goal, largely because Tai knows that manipulation of the Well’s power would require a sacrifice of young superhumans, and she feels Dwayne’s team of young heroes might suffice as replacements for the children of the pact if necessary. Inspired by famous Super Hero family the Fantastic Four, Dwayne recruits three new partners: Rich Rider, AKA Nova (whose dormant powers Taylor restores by dropping him off a roof) Vance Astrovik, AKA Marvel Boy, and Angelica Jones, AKA Firestar (whose secret identity Taylor threatens to expose). When they first assemble, the quartet teams up with fellow young adventurers Namorita and Robbie Baldwin, AKA Speedball, to defeat the cosmic-powered alien Terrax, and all six decide to unite as the New Warriors, funded by the Taylor fortune with Chord as their mentor. Their earliest foe includes Midnight’s Fire, whom Dwayne defeats and leaves with a facial scar mirroring his own. A physically disabled but still formidable Silhouette soon joins the Warriors, rekindling her romance with Dwayne.
Later in life, Dwayne discovers his father’s illegitimate son, Donyell Taylor, who becomes Bandit, and carries a vendetta against his half-brother, but he ultimately lets go of his anger and moves on to even carry the Night Thrasher name for a time. Dwayne’s family grows further when he adopts two sons, who become heroes as well, Elvin Haliday, AKA Rage, and Zachary Smith Jr., AKA Microbe.
Super-Powered Enemies
Forming the New Warriors, Dwayne leads the team against many enemies, including Terrax and the Poison Memories. Dwayne and the New Warriors also team up with X-Force to go up against Gamesmaster and Siena Blaze. Leaving the New Warriors, Dwayne infiltrates the Folding Circle where he discovers the truth of how his parents died and his adoptive mother Tai’s role in ordering their deaths.
