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Description
Night Thrasher
Real Name: Dwayne Taylor

First Appearance: The Mighty Thor #411 (December 1989)

The team's field leader on MRVL's New Warrior's reality show was the man known only as the Night Thrasher. His face obscured by his body armor, which was never removed on camera, and his voice masked by the sound team, the series stated this was all done to protect his identity as he was apparently a violent vigilante in his hometown of Philadelphia with many enemies. While his choice of fighting crime on a skateboard seemed laughable to viewers at first, he quickly became a fan favorite, with undeniable combat abilities that allowed him to keep up with his teammates despite lacking any super powers of his own.

While the show did its best to disguise the Night Thrasher's identity, it was an open secret that he was a young man named Dwayne Taylor. The backstory the New Warriors had given him, that of a violent vigilante who struck fear into the hearts of Philadelphia's inner city gangs, had been greatly embellished, but it was exactly the kind of hero Dwayne had aspired to become. Born to the owners of the Taylor Foundation, a large financial conglomerate, he was orphaned at a young age and raised by Andrew Chord, a wealthy businessman who took control of the foundation and merged it with his own, creating the MRVL corporation. Young Dwayne had trained his entire life to harness his grief and rage over the loss of his parents into becoming a defender of the innocent, and it was Chord who pushed him to become the New Warriors' Night Thrasher--both to bolster his networks' ratings and conveniently target his own corporation's enemies.

----

So Dwayne and the other New Warriors are being used by the show's owners for some pretty shady reasons. Hopefully they can fight back before something really goes wrong, but there aren't always happy endings in these businesses.

Yep, a surprise second update this week, just for fun. Night Thrasher is another classic New Warriors member, basically *the* New Warriors guy due to him starting the team and leading it. He's basically a teenage Batman in the comics, albeit with some weird backstory to his parents with some mystical well in some temple somewhere. As the New Warriors start out as a reality TV show here I decided to drop that weird backstory for the most part and connect him to the corporation that is producing the show. So his adoptive father, Andrew Chord, who is kind of morally complicated in the comics, is more outright villainous here. Basically, Dwayne has trained his whole life to be skateboard Batman (as ridiculous as that is, he got good at it), and his sinister adoptive father is using him for his own purposes.

But yeah, so "skateboard Batman." Night Thrasher is a character who is definitely a product of his time. I could have removed the skateboard and made him a straight up armored vigilante but without it he just seems so plain. So I decided to really lean into the extreme sports angle of the character for his design. He's still got a skateboard, and his armor is heavily based on BMX cyclist body armor. I think the design I went with is closest to his "Mark II" armor but I might be wrong, I can't remember exactly. The black and red color scheme combined with the completely opaque dark visor gives him this mysterious look that I felt a reality show like the New Warriors would really lean into, I love this idea of him being the one member who never removes his mask and his voice is always masked.

Description
Night Thrasher
Real Name: Dwayne Taylor

First Appearance: The Mighty Thor #411 (December 1989)

The team's field leader on MRVL's New Warrior's reality show was the man known only as the Night Thrasher. His face obscured by his body armor, which was never removed on camera, and his voice masked by the sound team, the series stated this was all done to protect his identity as he was apparently a violent vigilante in his hometown of Philadelphia with many enemies. While his choice of fighting crime on a skateboard seemed laughable to viewers at first, he quickly became a fan favorite, with undeniable combat abilities that allowed him to keep up with his teammates despite lacking any super powers of his own.

While the show did its best to disguise the Night Thrasher's identity, it was an open secret that he was a young man named Dwayne Taylor. The backstory the New Warriors had given him, that of a violent vigilante who struck fear into the hearts of Philadelphia's inner city gangs, had been greatly embellished, but it was exactly the kind of hero Dwayne had aspired to become. Born to the owners of the Taylor Foundation, a large financial conglomerate, he was orphaned at a young age and raised by Andrew Chord, a wealthy businessman who took control of the foundation and merged it with his own, creating the MRVL corporation. Young Dwayne had trained his entire life to harness his grief and rage over the loss of his parents into becoming a defender of the innocent, and it was Chord who pushed him to become the New Warriors' Night Thrasher--both to bolster his networks' ratings and conveniently target his own corporation's enemies.

----

So Dwayne and the other New Warriors are being used by the show's owners for some pretty shady reasons. Hopefully they can fight back before something really goes wrong, but there aren't always happy endings in these businesses.

Yep, a surprise second update this week, just for fun. Night Thrasher is another classic New Warriors member, basically *the* New Warriors guy due to him starting the team and leading it. He's basically a teenage Batman in the comics, albeit with some weird backstory to his parents with some mystical well in some temple somewhere. As the New Warriors start out as a reality TV show here I decided to drop that weird backstory for the most part and connect him to the corporation that is producing the show. So his adoptive father, Andrew Chord, who is kind of morally complicated in the comics, is more outright villainous here. Basically, Dwayne has trained his whole life to be skateboard Batman (as ridiculous as that is, he got good at it), and his sinister adoptive father is using him for his own purposes.

But yeah, so "skateboard Batman." Night Thrasher is a character who is definitely a product of his time. I could have removed the skateboard and made him a straight up armored vigilante but without it he just seems so plain. So I decided to really lean into the extreme sports angle of the character for his design. He's still got a skateboard, and his armor is heavily based on BMX cyclist body armor. I think the design I went with is closest to his "Mark II" armor but I might be wrong, I can't remember exactly. The black and red color scheme combined with the completely opaque dark visor gives him this mysterious look that I felt a reality show like the New Warriors would really lean into, I love this idea of him being the one member who never removes his mask and his voice is always masked.