I am writing this ahead of time so that it automatically posts on Thursday while I am descending into the belly of Comic Con.  So here it is, Ask Axe Cop #61… all about man traps.  As usual, the traps are thorough, creative and awesome.  I appreciate the spike/lion/tiger trap.  It really takes care of any contingencies where a guy might escape, or not fall on the spikes fatally, or maybe shoot the tiger.  I don't care who you are, you can't survive a spike/lion/tiger pit.

Yesterday was our Dad's birthday.  He's a good man.  We love him a lot and we all had steak (if everything went according to plan).  Happy birthday Dad, we love you!

If you are at Comic Con you really should be reading the blog I posted on Monday about our schedule, panel, etc.  Go read that much more useful blog entry.  This one… this one is done.

Ethan

Another day, another installment of Axe Cop: the Funny Episode.  It's funny because it says it is.  Ok it is more creepy than anything, but it is at least fun.

Monday I posted the definitive Axe Cop Comic Con 2011 blog.  Read it if you are attending Comic Con so you know what is what, when what is, and where to go.  It is especially important because Malachai will only be at the booth for an hour or two a day, so if you want to meet him you gotta check out the schedule.

Also, Mtv Geek made a list of the best mini-series and one shot comic books of 2010, and Bad Guy Earth placed #2!  There was a couple exceptional, book-jacket worthy comments:  (spoiler alert)”this may be the best, most ridiculous setup for a poop joke in the history of comic books” and “Axe Cop… is violent, bloody, frequently disgusting… And great for the whole family to read.”  Thanks Mtv Geek!

Alright, even though I will be at Comic Con, a new Ask Axe Cop will still post on Wednesday and a the final episode of the Funny Episode will post next Tuesday.  I haven't figured out if I will have an Ask Axe Cop for next week yet because I will be running around with my family visiting for a few days after Comic Con and am unsure when I will have time to draw it.  So, we'll see.  I may use family vacation and Con fatigue as an excuse and miss a day.  We'll see.

Also, August 3rd is the offical date of the beginning of BEARMAGEDDON, my other web comic series.  It will post two pages a week in full color.  It will post at www.bearmageddon.com.

(click to enlarge)

Until then… see you at Comic Con, and if I won't see you at Comic Con, well, have a good life anyway.

Ethan

This is the official blog post to tell you all you need to know about AXE COP at Comic Con 2011!  First and foremost, this is where you will find us:

click here for the full Exhibitor list and floor plan.

The next bit of info you will want is panels.  There are two panels I will be on…

Thursday 2:00pm  Join the 2D Animation Revolution.  Join Doug TenNapel, Skottie Young, Dave Gibbons, myself and others to discuss 2D art and animation and the software we use to make it happen.

and the MAIN EVENT:

Sunday 10:00am AXE COP.  This is the big Axe Cop panel.  Kevin Murphy will moderate as Malachai and I share what is going on in the world of Axe Cop!  We'll be giving a sneak peak at Munchkin Axe Cop and the Axe Cop documentary, as well as some behind the scenes stuff that has not been seen online or in books.

SIGNING:  At my booth (#1714) it is important for you to know that if you want Malachai's signature, he will only be at the booth for 1-2 hours a day.  Here is the schedule right now, but it is best to come to the booth and find out if there have been updates because it is subject to change.  Malachai may get tired of signing, and if he does he will not be at the booth.  We have done cons before, and he loves signing, but we have never tried 5 days straight.  If you don't get a Malachai signature, tough luck.  We will give as many as we can as long as he is enjoying himself.

WED (Preview Night): 6:00 This is probably the best time to catch Malachai, he will be fresh and rearing to go.  He probably will be there until 7 or so.

Wed
Malachai Signing:  6:00-7:30

Thurs
Malachai Signing 12:00-1:45

Fri
Signing/demonstrating Manga Studio at Smith Micro booth #5353 (just Ethan) 11:00-12:30 
Malachai Signing 2:15-4:00

Sat
Malachai Signing 2:00-4:00

Sun
Ethan and Malachai sign at Dark Horse booth #2615 12:00

Malachai final signing 1:00-2:00

Keep in mind that you may get lucky and catch Malachai at the booth at other times, but following this schedule is your best bet.  Also keep in mind that following this schedule is not a guarantee.  Malachai may not be in the mood to sign at these times and if he isn't, he won't be there.

I would also ask ALL Axe Cop fans this personal favor:  If you see Malachai with my family away from our booth PLEASE DO NOT ASK FOR AN AUTOGRAPH.  Please only request is autograph at the booth.  I know some people won't get this memo, but if you do please help us out by keeping to it.

COMMISSIONS

If you would like to buy a commission from me, I will be doing them first come, first serve.  If you would like to reserve a commission send me an email at info@axecop.com and let me know what you would like and I will give you paypal info (cut off for this is Tuesday night at midnight).  Commissions are 9″x12″ ink on bristol board for $40.00, add $5.00 per additional character.  I will do a commission in your own sketchbook at a price, depending on the size of the paper it will be between $20-$40.

We will have what is left of the Axe Cop One Year Anniversary Prints available and this will be a rare opportunity to get one signed by Malachai.  I will also be promoting my new project, BEARMAGEDDON.

That's it for now.  You can ask questions and hope I reply.

Today, Axe Cop solves the problem of homelessness.  I did my best as a big brother to try to explain the complexities to him in the few minutes we had.  I think he took a pretty centrist position.  He doesn't want to just hand out free food, but he does just want to hand out free jobs. 

Anyway, Comic Con is upon us!  io9 listed the Axe Cop panel as one of the coolest events you can't miss at Comic Con 2011.  I agree with them.

See you next Tuesday with part 2 of 3 of the Funny Episode.

Ethan

It may turn out that I loved the conversation that spawned this episode even more than the episode itself, but this may end up being one of Malachai's favorite episodes because it involves one of his favorite things: pranks.  Now, he doesn't play pranks of people much, if ever, as far as I know.  But when we play he LOVES pretending to play pranks.  We actually have an alternate play time from Axe Cop where we pretend to be two little chinchilla creatures with fist-tails who literally do nothing but prank their sister while she is trying to sleep.  Malachai gets a real kick out of it, but so far it has not yielded anything worthy of an actual story.  He will be excited to finally see some of our prank play times drawn out.  Of course since this is Axe Cop playing pranks, the pranks are generally murdering bad guys.

As I mentioned, Hot Topic has decided to carry this Axe Cop shirt design.  It's very pretty:

People say “you've made it!  You're at Hot Topic!”  not exactly.  This is Hot Topic taking a chance to see how Axe Cop sells.  So if this shirt does well, then maybe you can say that.  For those of you who complain about the kind of stuff that HT sells, well, all I can say is buy only Axe Cop stuff from them.  I'm sure if they sell enough Axe Cop merch they'll change their name to CHOP TOPIC.

It's been announced that the AXE COP PANEL at San Diego Comic Con is going to be on Sunday, July 24 at 10:00am.  Kevin Murphy of MST3K (Tom Servo) and Riff Trax will be moderating the panel.  We will have guests from Steve Jackson games there to give some sneak peaks of the Axe Cop munchkin game and I'll be giving you some looks at other upcoming Axe Cop stuff.  Malachai will be there and we will do a Q&A which is always fun.  I will also be on a panel on Thursday called Join the 2D Animation Revolution with Doug TenNapel, Dave Gibbons & Skottie Young.

Comic Con will be crazy.  Malachai will be signing for specific blocks of time.  I'll post more information on that as the con gets closer. 

Ethan

Finally Axe Cop teaches us how to party and it's, well… very morbid.  When we were making this, Malachai had me google party games and he made Axe Cop versions.  I like that a pie eating contest became a dead bad guy leg eating contest.  I don't know how they manage to do that without turning bad, but I assume Axe Cop has some sort of antedote.

Well, the other big thing today is that this new tee shirt design is now for sale at Hot Topic!  You can buy it at a Hot Topic store, or online.  It is similar to a design we had in the Topatoco shop, but this one is much better quality print, with gray tones rather than pure white on black.  It's a good looking shirt if I do say so myself.

Of course, if you haven't been to our own online store recently, please stop in.  Lots of cool shirts, prints and fun stuff. 

See you next week with AXE COP:  THE FUNNY EPISODE.

Ethan

If it is not obvious, Malachai came up with this story back around the same time he was coming up with the Bat Warthog Man Story ending.  He was on a real “get in a brain and fight” kick.  This Jack and John story was all a play time that I wrote down as we played.  You wouldn't know from the comic, but the bulk of the play time took place when Jack and John were drilling to the secret state.  Malachai was really into the drilling through the earth.  He even had us torching the earth, digging through hard spots, using pick axes… it was a long, long way to the Secret State.  I trimmed that down a bit because, well, we get the point.  They drilled really far.

Something else I love about this story is the fact that every bad guy is asleep.  Malachai really likes the idea of killing bad guys while they slumber, though in this story it did not seem planned, like when Axe Cop goes out on night missions… it just seemed that whenever ever Jack and John found bad guys they happened to be asleep.

Since this one had so many similarities (mainly with the brain) to the Bat Warthog Man story, I saved it until after the Bat Warthog Man story was finished posting.  Next week:  Axe Cop, the Funny Episode begins!  Thanks for reading.

Ethan

Malachai finally gives us the details of how to tell a good front kick from a bad front kick, and we aren't just talking technique, we are talking innate moral disposition.  The thing at the end of this epiosde with the super hero costume was actually from another answer he gave I never could fit anywhere… the full version is this:  Every night before you go to bed, you have to take off your super hero suit and shoot it in the heart.  If you fall asleep in it, it will turn evil in the morning and you will have to shoot it in the heart and you will die.  I have no idea where he got that but I found it kind of fascinating and it has all the makings of a good, tragic fairy tale or fable of some sort.

In other news… Axe Cop was in Nintendo Power!  NP did a feature on super heroes in video games and they had a side bar with heroes they would like to see have their own games.  At the top of the list was Axe Cop!  To me an Axe Cop video game is a no-brainer.  Let's get on it!!

That's all for now.  Need I remind you to get some of these awesome stickers?  See you next week for part two of Jack and John!

Ethan

You might be a little surprised if you are new to Axe Cop to see an “Axe Cop Presents” story up.  ACP is something we rarely update (this is only the 4th time), but it is short stories from Malachai that are from other characters that are not in the Axe Cop universe.

If you have not read Jack and John part one, you should go ahead and do that now.  If you never saw it, don't feel bad.  Even Malachai missed it.  It was not until we were “writing” this second installment that we realized he had never seen the first one.  We had played together that day, but I took all the notes in my head.  I was trying to give him a break from “writing” so we just played, but it was so comic-worthy I immediately wrote it down later and made it into a comic.  It is a favorite of mine, I really like entering a different world and getting to play.  Though I have to admit my dream is to see Frank Miller do the art on a Jack and John comic.  I'm still a newb at Dark Horse, so that will probably have to wait.

Anyway, enjoy this new Jack and John adventure.  Next week at the same time, the rest of the story will be released. 

In other news, I had an awesome time in Calgary.  Thanks to everyone who came out.  I finally got to meet Chris Hastings of Dr. McNinja and he is even more of a gentleman than I expected.  We had a good talk about how we can approach our next possible cross over.  I also had a blast hanging out with Scott Kurtz of PVP, Kris Straub of ChaisawSuit (and more), Jim Zubkavitch of SkullKickers and many others.

A new Ask Axe Cop will be up on Thursday.  We're back on track!  Thanks for stopping in and keeping the site warm and cozy.

Ethan

Sorry, no new episode today.  I'm still in Calgary and am taking a small break between story lines.  Will pick back up next week.