Chapel Chronicles is a hand drawn, full-color webcomic created by Emma T Capps which updates on Fridays with author commentary in English and Spanish.The strips center around the adventures of Chapel Smith, a zany 11 year-old girl and her hedgehog sidekick, Sir Rupert Tennyson Bollingsworth the First. Chapel loves hats, hates chores, has a little bit of an obsession with Lady Gaga, an archenemy, Fred, with whom she plays games, and in Season One adopts a pet hedgehog. The art has evolved in Season Two to give backgrounds to Chapel, such as a house, and to explore other aspects of her personality. The author sells a Webcomic Print Collection of the 32 strips in Season One. Can be read here. You probably should start from the beginning to get a real sense of Chapel's character and to understand later references.
Tropes featured in this webcomic
- The Ace: Chapel is obsessed with board and card games, so whenever Fred babysits her, that's how they pass the time. Fred always wins, driving Chapel up the wall.
- Alice Allusion: In the final strip of the first season, Chapel in Wonderland, Chapel imagines herself as Alice in Wonderland, with other characters from her strips appearing in Wonderland Cameos.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer: In Waiting for Buffy and the Whedon Addiction, Chapel is waiting to watch the DVDs of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
- Daydream Surprise: In Battleship: The Games Continue, Chapel imagines herself in a submarine being sunk by a patrol boat when in reality, her submarine has been sunk in the game.
- Dream Sequence: The comic book ends in a four page Dream Sequence entitled Chapel in Wonderland in which Chapel finds herself dressed as Alice from Alice in Wonderland. Fred, her archenemy is the Cheshire Cat, Lady Gaga appears having beheaded Justin Bieber, wanting to play chess with flamingos and using Rupert as the ball. Chapel finally leaves and walks off but is still dressed as Alice at the end.
- Easter Egg:
- In The Folly of Chivalry, the position of the chess pieces are the exact ones referenced by the characters when Alice checkmates in Through the Looking Glass but the black and white suits are reversed.
- In Lobster Delivery, the packing labels on the box (almost impossible to read) say 42 Penny Lane, referring to The Beatles, Millinery Co. Drum Isle, Grand Line, referring to a place in One Piece.
- Formally-Named Pet: Rupert, Chapel's pet hedgehog's formal name is Sir Rupert Tennyson Bollingsworth the First
- Halloween Cosplay: In a special Halloween strip, Chapel tried on a Gorgeous Period Dress, the Tardis from Doctor Who, finally deciding to wear the outfit of Cardcaptor Sakura with her hedgehog dressed as Kero-chan.
- Head Pet: Chapel's pet hedgehog, Rupert, occasionally is perched atop Chapel's big head of hair, as in Hedgehog Constitutional
- Imagine Spot
- In Chapel in Wonderland, Chapel imagines herself as Alice from Alice in Wonderland, and others from her life appear in the story.
- In The Good, the Bad, and the Hatted, Chapel imagines herself a gunslinger in one panel.
- Impractically Fancy Outfit: In the Gaga Saga, Chapel dresses in an outfit from the Lady Gaga video "Bad Romance" and a Versace outfit parodied on Glee.
- Indulgent Fantasy Segue: When Chapel plays games with her archenemy Fred, she sometimes engages in these. When she is playing Risk in Chapel the Conqueror, she imagines herself taking over the world before discovering that in reality, she has just lost the game. In the Folly of Chivalry, she imagines herself as Sir Lancelot when in reality, she has just been checkmated.
- Limited Wardrobe: Chapel's wardrobe is mainly limited to her Little Black Dress and loads of hats and is easily recognized by her clothing. In Gaga Dress Code and Oblivious to the Obsession, Chapel dresses in Lady Gaga outfits.
- Literary Allusion Title: The last four panels of Volume One entitled "Chapel in Wonderland" are a reference to Alice in Wonderland.
- Little Black Dress: Chapel wears a little black dress in almost every strip. It's one of her fundamental characterizations. In Chapter 3 of Season One entitled The Gaga Saga, Chapel wears various Lady Gaga outfits, one from the video Bad Romance and one which was also worn by Quinn on Glee.
- Long Pants: While other on-screen characters are drawn with shoes on, Chapel's feet are always portrayed as long skin-colored blobs, even though she has well-defined fingers. It's never clear whether that's the case of artistic simplification or Chapel being perpetually barefoot, but she is portrayed wearing shoes inside her personality flip nightmare, so it probably might be the latter. Interestingly, this trope also applies even after the comic undergoing Art Evolution for The Hats of London!
- Meaningful Name: Rupert, the hedgehog, is named after Rupert Giles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
- Pimped-Out Dress: The dresses in the Gaga Saga Chapter and in the Halloween Strip certainly qualify.
- Playing Pictionary: In a reversal of the usual trope, Chapel draws an photo-realistic Mona Lisa (how slow is that sand?), but Fred can't identify it.
- Puppy-Dog Eyes: In Chapel Guevara, Chapel gives her parents huge puppy-dog eyes while trying to get a well, puppy. It doesn't work. She gets a hedgehog instead.
- Robe and Wizard Hat: In Dumbledore Voodoo, Chapel wears a wizard cape and hat and uses a wand to find her math journal by using Accio Math Journal.
- Shout-Out: The strips have Shout Outs to other authors and works.
- In the The Babysitter Arrives, Chapel is wearing a hat worn by the character Nico Robin in One Piece.
- In The Good, the Bad, and the Hatted, Chapel is reading Hereville by Barry Deustch.
- In Google Epiphany, the computer Chapel is using has the Apple Newton logo.
- In The Folly of Chivalry, the chess pieces are drawn in the style of Through the Looking Glass, the first game for the Apple Macintosh.
- In Oblivious to the Obsession, the color of the Lady Gaga outfit is a Shout Out to the color worn by Quinn in Glee.
- In DVD Collection, Chapel proposes various names for her hedgehog which are all Shout Outs to science fiction television characters.
- In Chapel in Wonderland, Chapel references a poem by Edgar Allan Poe, "The Raven".
- Stoic Spectacles: Chapel wears tiny little granny glasses.
- Straw Hat Pirates: In The Babysitter Arrives, Work Schedule, and The Good, the Bad, and the Hatted, Chapel is wearing a hat styled after Nico Robin from One Piece.
- The Voice: Chapel's parents and Fred are often heard, but never seen.
- Webcomic Print Collection: The Chapel Chronicles Volume One collects the first 32 strips in Season One in a 44 page paperback edition. You can also buy it in select comic stores in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania (Showcase Comics), Chicago, Illinois (Chicago Comics), Berkeley, California (Fantastic Comics) and a toy store in San Mateo, California called Talbot's Toyland.