Even if you're a fan of Fox's Sunday night Animation Domination lineup, it's hard to ignore the fact that it's mostly just The Simpsons and various Seth McFarlane-produced shows. What about people who crave something different? Luckily, there's a new hero in town, and he'd rather slice bad guys than make off-color references to 1980's pop culture.
His name is Axe Cop.
Axe Cop makes its official debut this Saturday as part of Fox's Animation Domination HD lineup. But the franchise has been going strong for years in the form of a web comic created by two brothers. If you're wondering what all the fuss is about and why a cop wielding an axe is so special, we're here to help. We're looking back at how this comic book phenomenon got its start and what you need to know to enjoy the animated series.
One of the major selling points of Axe Cop is that it comes "from the mind of a 5-year-old." And that's not Hollywood embellishment. The series really was born out of the imagination of then-5-year-old Malachai Nicolle. The characters and ideas for Axe Cop are invented by Malachai. His older brother, Ethan (creator of the Eisner-nominated graphic novel Chumble Spuzz), converts them into slightly more coherent form as he pencils, inks, and letters every chapter of the web comic.
Comics Alliance interviewed the two brothers towards the beginning of the Axe Cop phenomenon, where Ethan shed more light on how their bizarre universe came to be:
I visited [Malachai] for a week during Christmas, and he was playing with a toy axe. He always wants me to play with him, and he usually wants to play dinosaurs, but he comes up to me with the axe and says, “Do you want to play Axe Cop?” And I say, “You have no idea how genius that is.” So I ask if I can be a cop, and he says sure, and comes out with this recorder. So I say, “Flute Cop? I don’t want to be Flute Cop.” So he trades with me, because he doesn’t care. So we’re Axe Cop and Flute Cop, and I say, “What are we going to do?” And he says, “Sign up here, we’re gonna fight dinosaurs.” So I said, let’s go cut their heads off. And I go, “Oh, now I’ve got blood all over me,” because a guy my age thinks it’s funny for blood to squirt everywhere. But then he says, “I got it on me too, and I turned into a dinosaur soldier!”
By the time we got to that point, I realized that if I were to draw this out like an old school comic and take it totally seriously, it would just be so funny. I figured I was just being partial, though — I drew the comic for my family so I never really expected to share it. But I posted it online on my Facebook, and my friends thought it was funny, so I asked [Malachai] what would happen next. He had a friend over that had a telescope, so suddenly we had Telescope Gun Cop. I just started quizzing him on what happens next in the story, and then I translated it onto the page.
Initially, Ethan posted the first four Axe Cop comics on his Facebook page in late 2009. While he originally intended Axe Cop to be practice for his next graphic novel project, it quickly became apparent that there was an audience for the continued adventures of an axe-wielding cop and his super-powered allies. The brothers launched the official Axe Cop website in January 2010.
Since then, the brothers have kept up their collaboration and currently produce a new online installment of Axe Cop every Tuesday. These updates may occur in the form of a new chapter in an ongoing Axe Cop adventure, or an installment of "Ask Axe Cop," where the titular hero is drawn answering various reader questions.
Essentially, Axe Cop is a serialized action/adventure comic with a heavy emphasis on absurd humor and plot twists. There's a loose sort of continuity running through the book, but the series features a world where just about anything can (and often does) happen.
The star of the show, of course, is Axe Cop. He's a policeman who found a fireman's axe, greatly boosting his heroic powers. He's had a mustache since birth, earning him the nickname "Baby Mario." Axe Cop is almost singlemindedly devoted to protecting the world. Fortunately, he only sleeps two hours a night, allowing him to be on duty almost constantly. At night he tends to trade his police uniform for a "catsuit," a stealthy getup with cat ears that allows him to sneak up on sleeping criminals and chop off their heads. His battle cry, naturally, is "I will chop your head off!"
But Axe Cop can't defend the world and the various other planets he travels to alone. He has a circle of close allies he often turns to, and he often holds recruitment drives whenever he's faced with a particularly tough enemy. His crimefighting partner is Flute Cop, and a special Episode 0 comic revealed that the two are actually brothers. One of the recurring gags of the comic is that Flute Cop has a habit of transforming into other characters. His most common alternate form is Dinosaur Soldier, but he's also masqueraded as Ghost Cop, Viking Cop, and Uni-Avocado Soldier.
The brothers have also teamed up with Sockarang (a hero with socks for arms that he can throw like boomerangs and Axe Cop's best friend), the Ninja Moon Warriors (two ninja brothers named Vampire Wolfer and Fire Slicer who dwell on the moon), the talking dog Ralph Wrinkles, Best Fairy Ever (the only girl cool enough to be on the team) and the incredibly smart father/son duo Uni-Man and Uni-Baby.
As kids tend to do, Malachai has shown a particular fascination with dinosaurs during the course of the series, so it's only fitting that Axe Cop has a pet T-Rex named Wexter. Wexter can be ridden or flown, breathes fire, and safeguards Axe Cop's lawn when he's not at home.
Few of the villains in the series survive their battles with Axe Cop and friends, but two of the more significant villains are Telescope Gun Cop (a former hero who turned to evil after Axe Cop didn't pick him for a team-up), Bad Santa, and Doctor StinkyHead.
Axe Cop quickly gained momentum after the website launched in 2010, gaining recognition from the likes of Entertainment Weekly and GQ within a matter of weeks. In July of that year, Axe Cop enjoyed a brief crossover with the long-running web comic The Adventures of Dr. McNinja.
As with web comics like PvP and Penny Arcade, Axe Cop's online popularity eventually attracted the attention of various comic book publishers. Ethan chose to partner with Dark Horse. The first result of that partnership was an ashcan comic released at SDCC 2010. That issue reprinted the first few chapters of the web comic, along with a sampling of "Ask Axe Comic" strips. Dark Horse followed up that promo with a larger trade paperback collection of the web comic.
But the following year saw the release of the first print-only Axe Cop material. The Nicolle brothers crafted a three-issue mini-series called Axe Cop: Bad Guy Earth. The mini-series took advantage of the new format by offering a more long-from storyline where Axe Cop and Dinosaur Soldier battled a mind-controlled US Army. The mini-series also brought Axe Cop into color for the first time.
Dark Horse followed up those two releases with a second TPB collection of the web comics and another print-only story called Axe Cop: President of the World. So those fans who want the "whole story," as it were, will need to purchase the Bad Guy Earth and President of the World trades in addition to reading the archived web comics or their respective trades.
Axe Cop has enjoyed a few brushes with merchandising over the years (including T-shirts sold through the official website and an upcoming line of action figures and plush dolls from Mezco), but it really went mainstream when Fox acquired the rights to adapt the comic as an animated series. Axe Cop is one of the shows that kicks off Fox's new Animation Domination HD lineup of Saturday night programming. It's no coincidence that the acronym spells ADHD, as Fox is squarely targeting the audience for Adult Swim's quirky, adult-flavored animated programming.
Though obviously closely inspired by the source material, the Axe Cop animated series isn't crafted by the Nicolle brothers. Instead, Nick Weidenfield and Judah Miller (American Dad) developed the concept, while Drawn Together co-creators Dave Jeser and Matt SIlverstein are serving as showrunners. The first season is being crafted as a set of six 11-minute episodes, with the itnention to switch to more traditional 30-minute episodes if a second season is greenlit.
The series certainly has the right cast of voice actors to succeed. Nick Offerman, perhaps the closest thing there is to a living Axe Cop, is voicing the lead hero. Offerman's wife and frequent comedic partner, Megan Mullally, is voicing the various female characters. Meanwhile, Ken Marino is voicing Flute Cop, while Patton Oswalt is voicing Sockarang. The preview episode alone features everyone from Giancarlo Esposito to Tyler, The Creator in guest roles.
The big question is whether Axe Cop can retain its innocent, absurdist charm when it no longer springs directly "from the mind of a 5-year-old" (to be fair, Malachai is 9 now). And judging from our review of the preview episode, that's definitely a concern going forward.
Luckily, fans can look forward to a much more faithful adoption of the original strips as well. The Youtube channel Rugburn has started airing a series of motion comics designed directly from the original online strips. And if motion comics aren't your thing either, at least the comic itself is still going strong.
Jesse is a writer for various IGN channels. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter, or Kicksplode on MyIGN.
Source : ign[dot]com
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