Written by Jim Valentino and Robert Loren Fleming
Drawn by Richard Horie
Published by Image Comics

Released in April 1996, two months after the release of the previous issue, this issue is actually part two of a five-part crossover called SHADOWHUNT that ran through five of the Extreme Studios comic book series’.

This storyline focused on Jim Valentino’s character Shadowhawk, one of the original Image heroes. Shadowhawk was Paul Johnstone, a Black man who was a district attorney in NY, who was injected with HIV+ blood by some mobsters. This was back when that was basically a death sentence. Johnstone decided to use his remaining time as a vigilante, building some crude armor to fight crime as Shadowhawk. Except instead of just beating up criminals like Batman or outright killing them like The Punisher, his signature movie is that he would break their backs, leaving them crippled.

Shadowhawk and Chapel crossed paths before, in Shadowhawk #12, as they both were checking out a secret U.S. government facility where they suspected there was a cure for AIDS (Chapel had also been injected with HIV by his previous boss, Jason Wynn, as revealed in Youngblood Strikefile). Later, Johnstone sought out the WILDC.A.T.S. for help, and they instructed a cybernetic body that they could transfer his brain into so he could live, but for some reason, the transfer didn’t work, and Johnstone eventually succumbed to AIDS and died. Chapel eventually killed himself to become a demon and then was resurrected, and apparently, his HIV was erased, as it hasn’t been mentioned in this series.

So this storyline, which began in Shadowhunt Special #1, had that android body Johnstone couldn’t use gain sentience and decide to resume Johnstone’s crimefighting work, except it has zero human compassion. So the robot is brutally murdering every criminal it comes across, even someone simply jaywalking. It’s also killing law enforcement officers who get in its way, and occasionally the victims of the criminal (in this issue, we see it slit the throat of a woman who was screaming because that was “disturbing the peace”). In this issue, the FBI has hired Chapel to take down the robot.

Chapel, armed with guns, swords, and a bazooka, tracks the robot in NY, and basically, we get a long, brutal fight. There’s also an unnamed female FBI agent who is accompanying Chapel even though he doesn’t want her around and keeps trying to get rid of her. She does end up saving him at one point, however, it’s not enough. In the end, Chapel is defeated, and the Shadowhawk robot emerges victorious, with the FBI realizing it’s time to call in Youngblood, so this storyline is set to continue in the next issue of that title.

As a Chapel story this is actually pretty good. This is the kind of status quo that would work for a Chapel ongoing series, he’s retired from Youngblood and traditional superhero adventures now and is working as a mercenary for the U.S. Government, tracking various superhuman threats that the public superheroes can’t handle. This should have been the premise from the beginning. The problem is that as the final issue of this series it’s unfulfilling, ending with the lead character defeated. But it is what it is.