Image Comics Database
Register
Advertisement
Real Name
Bruce Stinson
Current Alias
Aliases
Lord Chapel
Identity
Alignment
Relatives
Chapel II (son)
Universe

Characteristics
Gender
Height
Eyes
Hair
Unusual Features
White skull tattoo on face
Status
Citizenship
Marital Status
Occupation
Mercenary; former Assassin, Government Agent, Lord of Hell, Soldier
Origin
Origin
Chemically enhanced human
Creators
First appearance

Quote1 Another night, another love. Quote2
-- Bruce Stinson[1]

HistoryEdit

Origin

On Halloween night, 1978, a young Bruce Stinson was assaulted by a gang of kids led by a kid wearing skull paint in his face, an event that traumatized him. Shortly after, Bruce's mother passed away from cancer, and he was forced to go live with his abusive Uncle Theo. To cope, he turned to religion and took communion.[2] In school, his best friend was Albert Simmons.[3]

Somewhere between 1979 and 1983, Bruce joined the army, where he served alongside Lou Jacks.[4] He went on to be a mercenary,[5] who worked for the government several times assassinating third-world dictators[6]. His team was composed of Roger Dickenson, Jeff Jackson, Jet Li, Kevin O'Brian, Brad Smitts and Billy Zane.[7]

Chapel from Chapel Vol 1 1

In 1983, Chapel and his team of mercenaries were hired to go to Nicaragua and eliminate a rogue U.S. colonel named Black for practicing voodoo. Upon landing in the jungle, they were immediately ambushed by Contras. Chapel and his team slaughtered their attackers and stripped them of weapons. One of the corpses briefly reanimated and taunted Chapel, but he ignored it. The team moved on and came across a riverside Contra outpost. Chapel’s men opened fire, ultimately blowing up an ammunition storage shed and killing all the contras present. They then waded into the river until Chapel was pulled underwater. He quickly resurfaced entangled with a large, red snake.[7] Smitts tossed Chapel a grenade, and Chapel shoved it down the snake’s throat, killing it. Chapel and his team proceeded onward and came upon a village. They found the locals brutally slaughtered, many dumped in a cave with their hearts ripped out. Horrified and enraged, Chapel ordered his team to move on and set off a grenade in the cave, destroying the bodies. Deeper into the jungle, Chapel and the team reached an ancient temple. Zombie Contras burst out of the ground and attacked, killing most of the team. Only Chapel and Jackson survived, wiping out the zombies by blowing their heads off. Inside the temple, they split up, and Chapel found their target, Colonel Black, sitting on a throne in front of a giant statue of a demon. Black magically brushed off Chapel’s gunfire, transferred his mind into the statue, and attacked. Chapel killed Black’s human body and then cleaved the statue in two with a sword, destroying him. Afterward, Chapel and Jackson were exfiltrated by helicopter.[8]

In 1984, Chapel was interviewed to join a special task force tentatively named the Young Project. At first, it seemed like he was too violent for the job,[2] but agent John Stone saw potential in Chapel and disguised himself as a fake supervillain named Fist of the Bizarre to test him.[9] Chapel beat the Fist to a pulp, earning him a pass into the project.[10]

Operation Knightstrike from Operation Knightstrike Vol 1 3

On February 1986, plans for the Young Project were sidetracked when a U.S. helicopter carrying special documents to Afghanistan rebels was forced out of the sky by the Russian airforce. Wanting to retrieve the documents and the pilots, Alexander Graves hastily put together a task force named Operation: Knightstrike to take care of the matter. On February 12th, Chapel and Al Simmons rescued a mechanic in detroit named Benjamin Randall, who was being robbed, hoping to give the streets more control from crime. Afterwards, they met John Stone, who hired them for Operation: Knightstrike. Chapel accepted on the condition that Al came with him. On February 14th, Chapel, Al and Stone met their teammates, Dutch, Peter Frehley and Duke, and were briefed about the Afghanistan situation.[3] The Knightstrike team deployed to the Afghan-Pakistani border and met their guide, an Afghan woman named Roxanne, and her son, Mujahadeem. When Knightstrike was stopped by Pakistani bandits, Battlestone killed one with a mortar, and the team wiped out the rest. Knightstrike continued on until they were attacked by a Soviet response force. Frehley used a rocket launcher to destroy a Soviet helicopter while Dutch took down another, and Battlestone crushed a Soviet tank with a boulder. Simmons blew up a transport truck, but one soldier survived and attacked him. Mujahadeem shot and killed the soldier, saving him. That night, Knightstrike reached the outskirts of Kabul, and Roxanne left with her son.[11] Knightstrike hid in a cave prior to their assault. Chapel challenged Battlestone’s leadership, but Simmons talked him down. The team moved into Kabul and was soon attacked by Soviet troops. They returned fire but were soon cornered in a back alley. A squad of genetically enhanced Spetsnaz troops was deployed to attack Knightstrike. The team killed them all, so they dropped barrels of knockout gas, and the team was taken captive by Lt. Fruman. The members of Knightstrike awakened in restraints, facing Russian General Grozny, who revealed the captured U.S. pilot was Stone’s brother, Cabbot.[12] The rest of the details of this mission are unknown, but Operation: Knightstrike continued operating.

Later that year, Cabbot joined Knightstrike, but one of their operations got leaked to the press, so the Government created the more colorful superhero team Youngblood, and had Chapel join its ranks.[13]

Regardless, Operation: Knightstrike continued operating in secret. In 1987, Chapel raided a Cybernet base in St. Louis alongside Simmons and Duke, with special orders by Wynn to execute Duke for treason, although he wasn't given any other explanation than that. After escaping a trap put in place by Cybernet's leader, Giger, Chapel shot Duke and killed him. When they discussed the mission with Wynn, he told them not to worry about Duke's specific actions.[14] During all this, Chapel received regular injections that seemed to optimize his physique. Shortly after Duke's death, Al tried to warn him against the injections, but Chapel believed Wynn would never let him be harmed. In reality, he was been injected with a strain of HIV that could be activated on command if Chapel ever went rogue.[15]

In Summer 1988, Chapel was part of a Youngblood operation alongside Riptide, Raines, Battlestone, Boggs, Gamble and Diehard. They were deployed to Kuwait to prevent Hassan Kussein's Iraqui Army from invading. Although they defeated the first strike, Boggs and Raines were killed by a booby trap when checking out an underground supply bunker. When Gamble confronted Battlestone's authority over this tragedy, Stone murdered him, and Diehard pulled rank and began beating Stone. After Chapel stopped Diehard from murdering Stone, Chapel arrested John, ending the mission.[16]

In 1989, Chapel welcomed his new field leader, Shaft, who led him and Diehard, Bedrock, Vogue, Combat and Link.[16]

1992

On March 1992, Chapel was at his apartment in Arlington when he received a notification to go to Youngblood's headquarters. He told the woman he was in bed with that she should leave her number just to give her hopes. Chapel travelled to Washington, where he joined his Youngblood teammates and stopped supervillains Strongarm and Gage from breaking out the other half of their supervillain team, The Four, composed of Deadlock and Starbright.[1]

A week later,[17] Chapel responded to an alert informing him there was a breakout going on at The Pentagon alongside Shaft and Bedrock. They arrived to find The Four being freed by a villain named Showdown and a group of ninjas. The Four tried to teleport away, but Chapel was able to shoot Gage clear of teleport range. Afterwards, Diehard appeared with the news that there was an incident with the Away Team, and they needed to go to Germany to provide support immediately.[18] For this mission, Chapel and the Home Team were joined by Photon.[19]

After flying for ten hours, Chapel and the Home Team found the Away Team knocked out in a G.A.T.E. International laboratory where the they had been called to supervise the transport of a super-soldier named Jonathan Taylor Prophet. Prophet was the only remaining combatant against an army of robotic soldiers called Disciples of Doom, who were arriving through a portal from the planet D'khay. Also present were the Berzerkers, a group of freedom fighters from D'Khay. Shortly after, the tyrant ruler of D'Khay, Darkthornn, also joined the fray.[19] When Darkthornn opened up even more portals, letting through an army of winged demon soldiers, Chapel could barely keep his head above water, until Away Team member Psi-Fire overpowered Darkthornn with his psychic powers and made him retreat back to his home planet, ending the crisis.[20]

On August 9, Chapel joined his teammates Bedrock, Diehard, Shaft, Vogue and Combat to guard vice-president Dan Quayle at Strategic Defense Initiative Astronomics along with two mercenaries named Pike and Hestia. There, the VP was assaulted by a rogue Covert Action Team.[21] Chapel shot the terrorist named Spartan to kill, despite Shaft's orders to bring the terrorists alive. Another terrorist, Maul, began growing in size to the point of almost bringing the building down on everybody, but his teammate Voodoo put him to sleep psychically. Seeing she had saved them, Combat was willing to entertain the possibility that there was more going on there than met the eye. When the Vice-President tried to execute Voodoo, Shaft told him to let them handle the terrorists, but the Vice President, outraged at being touched and questioned, shot at Shaft and grazed his skull. With Youngblood turning against him, Voodoo extracted an alien named B'lial from inside the Vice President, exposing the being who had been controlling his actions.[22] Shortly after, Chapel, Combat and Bedrock received an energy blast from the alien in charge, named Lord Helspont. As the Wild C.A.T. left to take care of him, Youngblood directed its attention to his cronies, Pike and Hestia. Shortly after, the facility started self destructing, and Youngblood was forced to run with the Vice-President, praying the C.A.T. could make it out on their own. After the explosion, there was no sign of any of the involved parties, except for the C.A.T.'s cyborg, who sacrificed himself to stop Helspont. Shaft commented the C.A.T. seemed like a resourceful bunch, and that he wouldn't be surprised if their paths crossed again.[23]

Youngblood Strikefile Vol 1 1 Flip cover

Later that year, Chapel was contacted by his old Operation: Knightstrike boss, Jason Wynn. Wynn needed him for a mission, but Chapel refused the offer.[14] Following that, he was having sex when a group of Cybernet's War Dogs stormed his apartment and killed the woman he was with. After disposing of them, one decapitated skull relayed an audio message from Chapel's old enemy Giger, saying the attack was to gain his attention and to meet down on the docks tomorrow evening. The following night, Chapel met Giger, who warned him Wynn had hired him to murder Chapel. Giger offered to hire Chapel to murder Wynn, but Chapel simply shot Giger's decoy body. From its remains, Giger's voice warned Chapel to watch his back.[24] Afterwards, Chapel raided Wynn's home. When he was about to kill him, Wynn revealed the injections Chapel received during his time with Operation: Knightstrike included a strain of HIV that had been activated. Wynn had also alerted Youngblood of Chapel's medical condition, which would result in his firing unless he took Wynn's cure. To gain access to that, though, Chapel would need to obey Wynn's commands.[15]

1993

In 1993, Chapel was briefed by Government officials from the Pentagon, who let him know the outlaw team named Brigade was considered a threat that needed taken out. They explained they had set up a task force called Bloodstrike to deal with them, but Chapel agreed to help if necessary.[25]

Chapel also received a call from his old war buddy Lou Jacks, who now worked for the New York City Police Department and needed help capturing the vigilante ShadowHawk. However, Chapel said he was too busy and recommended a different mercenary to Jacks.[4]

Later events

After an encounter with Spawn, Chapel's skull tattoo became permanent as it were his bones marked by the hand of Spawn.[26] Later, Chapel killed himself and became Lord Chapel. He worked for the Devil and was willing to destroy Youngblood and his old teammates.[27] He was later brought back to life and assigned as Bloodstrike's field commander.[28]

Character Powers and Equipment


Powers and AbilitiesEdit

Powers

Chapel uses various types of weapons, from guns to swords; he is a formidable fighter.

Abilities

Weaknesses

  • Illness(formerly): Chapel was infected with an artificially created strand of HIV.


Appearances, Images, and Quotes Edit


Appearances in Other Media Edit

Comic Crossovers


ReferencesEdit

Mal
Spawn Villain(s)
Image Logo

This character, team or organization, is or was primarily an enemy of Spawn, or members of the Spawn Supporting Cast. This template will categorize articles that include it into the category "Spawn Villains."

Advertisement