Chapel (comics)

Chapel
Publication information
Publisher	Image Comics
Created by	Rob Liefeld
In-story information
Alter ego	Bruce Stinson
Team affiliations	Youngblood Bloodstrike
Notable aliases	Lord Chapel

Chapel (real name Bruce Stinson) is a fictional comic book character in the Image Comics universe. He started out as a supervillain but later became a superhero. He was created in the early 1990s by writer and artist Rob Liefeld specifically for Youngblood, a comic book series about a government-sponsored superhero team.

Fictional character biography

Bruce Stinson was a soldier who upon later in his career took the role of employment in Operation Knightstrike alongside Al Simmons, a fellow soldier-turned-mercenary. At one point Chapel was ordered by his superior to murder Al Simmons. The order was given because Al Simmons was a suspected spy. However, Al Simmons became the dark vigilante Spawn.

Throughout his career Bruce was instilled with several chemicals which in turn would give him various superhuman abilities. Unbeknownst to Chapel, he was also injected with a type of HIV which could be activated by his superiors by a special serum. One of Chapel's bosses, Jason Wynn, who had frequent feuds with Al Simmons, commissioned Chapel to kill Spawn. A while after Al Simmons death, Chapel became a member of Youngblood.

Spawn eventually regained his memory of Chapel being his killer, and began hunting him. Spawn ambushed Chapel and took him to a swampy area, where Chapel had his face cut out by Spawn (in the shape of a skull. Afterwards Chapel was forced to replace the missing skin with a skull that he had grafted onto his bone (where his facial skin use to be).

Afterwards he continued to work with Youngblood for a time until he was removed from Youngblood service. Out of curiosity he hunted Spawn to try and find out the secret of his resurrection. Upon learning about Hell and the Hellspawn process he shot himself in the head. He awoke and instead of becoming a Hellspawn he became Lord Chapel, a horseman of apocalypse in service to his mistress Calcifer.

When he was separated from this creature, Chapel returned to Gazer as a woman only to be turned back to a man again and left feeling empty.

His most recent appearance was outside of Youngblood; he teamed-up with Spawn to face his other half, Lord Chapel.

Character origin

Like many Youngblood characters, Chapel was based on an original concept by Liefeld for a new Teen Titans series.

Publishing history

Chapel mostly appeared in the titles Spawn and Youngblood. However, he was also given a couple of short-lived, self-titled series. The second Chapel series, published in 1995, was written by Brian Witten and Eric Stephenson and featured the art of Calvin Irving.

Other media

Although absent from the live action Spawn film, Chapel (called Jess Chapel) made appearances on HBO's Todd McFarlane's Spawn. In here, he had the same backstory as the comics version.

External links

• Official site of Chapel's creator, Rob Liefeld