Chapel (character)

Did You Know?

• Chapel appeared in a couple of short-lived, self-titled series; the second series, published in 1995, was written by Brian Witten and Eric Stephenson and featured the art of Calvin Irving.
• Absent from the live-action Spawn film, Chapel was replaced by Jessica Priest.
• Chapel (called Jess Chapel) appeared on HBO's Todd McFarlane's Spawn, voiced by Ruben Santiago-Hudson.

Fictional character biography

Bruce Stinson, a black-ops soldier, spent the later part of his career alongside fellow soldier-turned-mercenary Al Simmons during Operation Knightstrike. The animated series Todd McFarlane's Spawn states that Chapel was born in a prison in Joliet, Illinois. A heavy smoker and womanizer, he specialized in unconventional warfare, including torture. His superior once ordered him to kill Al Simmons on suspicion of espionage. After dying and descending to hell, Simmons returned as the vigilante Spawn.

Throughout his service, Bruce received chemical treatments granting him superhuman abilities. Unknown to him, he was also injected with a type of HIV that his superiors could activate with a special serum. His boss, Jason Wynn—a frequent adversary of Al Simmons—hired Chapel to assassinate Simmons. Following Simmons's death, Chapel joined the superhero team Youngblood. Wynn later turned against Chapel, dispatching his old enemy Giger to eliminate him after Chapel refused a mission. This storyline also introduced Duke, a former colleague of both Chapel and Simmons, who was branded a traitor.

When Spawn recovered his memories of Chapel as his killer, he began hunting him. Spawn ambushed Chapel and teleported him to a swamp in Botswana, where he disfigured Chapel's face to resemble his own skull-like makeup. Forced to replace the missing skin, Chapel grafted a skull onto the exposed bone. He continued working with Youngblood, confronting extra-dimensional invaders threatening the religious hero John Prophet. Eventually, Chapel was removed from Youngblood service. Driven by curiosity, he hunted Spawn to uncover the secret of his resurrection. After learning about Hell and the Hellspawn process, Chapel shot himself in the head. Instead of becoming a Hellspawn, he rose to power in Hell as Lord Chapel, defeating Lucifer (Alexander Graves). When later separated from this entity, Chapel returned as a woman named Gazer, only to be transformed back into a man and left feeling empty.

In later Spawn comics, due to rights issues stemming from Chapel's debut in Youngblood, Rob Liefeld reclaimed the character. Jessica Priest was subsequently introduced as Al Simmons's killer. The Scorched 24 series later added Frank Bishop as a replacement for Chapel, as Jessica took on a more heroic role.