Chapel (comics)

Chapel is a fictional character comic book character appearing in books published by his creator, Rob Liefeld. Liefeld created the character in 1992 as member of the government superhero group Youngblood, which started in their series of the same name.

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. According to the animated series, Chapel was born in a prison in Joliet, Illinois. He is a known smoker and womanizer, who is proficient in unconventional warfare such as torture. 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.

Wynn also, for a time, turned on Chapel, trying to use his old enemy Giger to take him down after Chapel refuses a mission from Wynn. This story also introduces Duke, an old colleague of Chapel and Simmons that was a supposed traitor to the group.

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 used to be).

Afterwards he continued to work with Youngblood for a time. For example, he confronts extra-dimensional invaders that plague the religious hero 'John Prophet'. Chapel is later removed from Youngblood service. Out of curiosity he hunted Spawn to try to 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.

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 is replaced by Jessica Priest), Chapel (called Jess Chapel) made appearances on HBO's Todd McFarlane's Spawn, in which he had the same backstory as the comics version.