Author: Ethan Nicolle

Uh oh!  Big trouble on Uni-Smart World!

The prints are finally about to get numbered, signed, and shipped out.  They are glorious and huge and on nice, heavy paper in 3 color screen print.  The print is one foot wide by 39 inches tall (about 3.5 feet tall).

There are only about 30 of these left stock.  They'll be signed and numbered and are limited to 100 pieces.

A fan of Axe Cop who, so far I only know as “the Last Banana” in our forum, has created a mod for the online game “Cortex Command”. 

Check out these videos of Axe Cop characters in action.  First, Wexter performs his super duper fast bite, breathes fire, flies, and blasts in machine guns. (machine guns are fast!)
Wexter

Here's Axe Cop chopping heads off, throwing lemon grenade bombs and then becoming Axe Cop FIRE with the help of his pet T-Rex.
Axe Cop

Flute Cop walks into battle with his flute, then he gets dinosauur blood on him, then he eats and avocado… then he throws grenades at Uni-Baby… you just gotta see it!
Flute Cop

And of course the tossing of the horned child:
Uni-Baby

The game can be downloaded from the Data Realms website, and there is a free trial version that only limits how long a match can last, so anyone can play with the mod, even if they haven't bought the game.
To download the mod, people can visit the topic on the Data Realms forums for a download link.  A guide on installing mods can be found here.

Mr. Banana says he may be adding more onto this mod later, but for now, it is basically some extra weapons and playable characters for the game.  I give this man props.  Comment on those youtube videos if you love them like I do.  I don't have much time for video games, but seeing these in action still makes me giddy.

Ethan

Today the coolest 5 year old on the internet (and in the universe in my opinion) becomes the coolest 6 year old on the internet.  Today is Malachai's 6th birthday.

This kid has been one of the greatest things to ever happen to the Nicolle family, and I say that totally regardless of the whole Axe Cop thing.  He is incredbly smart, which is an anomally among Nicolles.  We have all been bright people, but usually not very book smart.  Malachai, so far is way ahead of his class and a natural learner.  He plays video games on the net that require reading, but he just figures them out with logic.  He is a very genuine and loving kid and when people try to interview him about Axe Cop, he wants to interview them because he is fascinated by everyone and wants to play with anyone who is willing to pick up a toy dinosaur or plastic fireman axe and imagine with him.

I have seen a lot of comments online saying things like “this kid is disturbed”.  I don't think that is anywhere near true.  He has the same innocent detachment from reallity we all had at five.  Imagine you and a friend in a plastic sword fight at that age “I just chopped off your legs, you can't walk now!”  We did not think about the gruesomness of the idea of chopping off heads and legs, with bloofd gushing out and our family looking on in horror, clutching the floor and dragging our bloody stumps until we die somewhere from loss of blood.  We were not violent in the true sense of the word.  It was playing, and for boys, playing means chopping off appendages more often than not.  My mom kept me away from He-Man and G.I. Joe when I was really young, so I played My Little Pony with the girl across the street.  I remember mainly I would put them at the edge of the table and make them have a fight to the death on the ledge, til one plummeted to their death from a good horse kick in the face.

Thanks to you I have been able to really dig into the stories in Malachai's head and find ideas in him he may never have come up with because no one would have been asking.  It has been the funnest collaboration of my life and something that, no matter what happens here and now, will be a great memory for us for the rest of our lives.  Of course, there is real life, and I assumed that real life would dictate I could not spend my time making comics with my 5 year old brother, because that will get me nowhere.  I seem to have been wrong.  As long as we keep receiving the supports we have been, (and as long as it remains fun) we will keep making these comics and we will go an an adventure few brothers 24 years apart in age ever have in the history of the earth. 

Many heads will roll.

Thanks for reading Axe Cop.  Post your birthday wishes here for Malachai, he does not read the Facebook page or Twitter.  Happy Birthday little brother!

-Ethan

I'm about to leave for San Jose so I got the new episode up bright and early. 

If  you live anywhere near San Jose California you should come out to my gallery tonight at SLG's outiki gallery.  Lots of art will be on display with live music and good people. It is tonight from 8pm-11pm.  More info at the SLG website or here on Facebook.

Saturday I am doing a workshop for aspiring comic artists.  If you come to this I will give you a free “CHOP” president Axe Cop poster.  More info is here.

Also, for those of you who ordered a “Good VS. Bad” poster print, don't worry, they still haven't shipped.  They took a bit longer to print then expected and I have to singlehandedly sign, number, package and ship them all when they get here on top of everything else.  Thanks for being patient we'll get them out as soon as possible.

Off to San Jose!  Thanks for reading Axe Cop.  And don't forget…

Ethan

So today we learn about the female addition to Axe Cop's team in Ask Axe Cop #14

In the first panel you can see Axe Cop's collection of home movies.  Here it is blown up:

that last one looks like 200 fight, but it says “Zoo fight.”

The story behind this Axe Cop episode is this.  One day I was talking to Malachai on the phone and he started telling me about some new charcters he was trying to read to me from a piece of paper.  My Dad started to read it for him and it became very obvious when he started to describe a fairy and a princess and all the jewelry and hairstyles they wore, that this was something Malachai's sister Megan had slipped him.  I told Malachai I need him to make up this stuff, so we put the piece of paper aside.

Weeks later I ask him if Axe Cop will ever have a girl on his team and he starts talking about the fairy from Megan's attempted plant.  He couldn't remember most of the details, so I told him to just make up his own fairy, and that is how we got the BFE (Best Fairy Ever).

Ethan

Just read Episode 11 before I give it all away.

I remember when Malachai told me about his “Fire Dumptruck” move on the phone.  I love how he just cuts straight to efficiency and just scoops all his enemies up and tosses them in the fire.  Of course then we are introduced to a “Carmation” which is “two secret attacks combined.”  He went into great detail on the carmation move, and I did my best to capture it without spending the next 12 episodes on it.

Stuff to look forward to… more motion comics are in the works.  Since posting that last motion comic a bad ass team of motion graphics wizards have joined my team (front kick checked out) and they are taking it to a whole new level (I was already amazed at what Dylan did with the first one).

Other than that?  I don't know.  I hope you didn't miss Axe Cop on a broom, defeating the entire world yesterday.   I decided to be random and post this episode at 3:30am.  I want to wake up and see how many people discovered it without me tweeting or posting anything on Facebook.  Enjoy!

Ethan

Ask Axe COp number 13 shows us what Axe COp might have in common with Howard Hughs.  If you didn't read the blog a couple days ago, just remember that the new Axe Cop format is a new Axe COp episode every day.   A new story episode on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and a new Ask Axe COp on Tuesday and Thursday. 

Things have been crazy here.  I thought the frenzy had ended a week or two ago, but yesterday we had our highest recorded numbers ever and I have had a second wave of fancy people with brief cases emailing me and calling me this week.  Axe Cop!!

Ethan

The day I drew and posted Ask Axe Cop 8, a star was born.  We found out that Axe Cop has a pet Tyranosaurus Rex named Wexter who has robot machine gun arms.  He breathes fire and has a super-duper fast bite.

There was an image in that episode that has had a greater response than any other image in an Axe Cop yet.  It is an image that, I didn't honestly even realize at the time, summed up manliness and the 5 year old boy's imagination all in one drawing… It was the image of Axe Cop riding Wexter to the moon to fight bad guys:

I decided I want to enlarge this image and color it.  Offer it as a desktop at the very least… so I enlarged the small drawing from the comic and had a friend spot color it real quick and dirty.

But I was not satisfied.  I wanted to print this thing into an awesome giant poster.  I wanted the full color to be glorious.  I wanted to take time and really go in there and detail this thing.  So I decided to blow it up, then totally re-ink it at a bigger size:

Here are some close ups, comparing the old and new versions.  First, Wexter's head:

Then Axe Cop…

Then the aliens…

And because I made this image longer (to fit poster size) I added a couple more aliens.  One taking a round in the chest:

So, my next step is to add solid color to the whole image (colorists call it “flatting”) then from there start shading, lighting and all that fun stuff.  I will keep blogging my progress so you can see how it is coming, then when it is ready it will be available as a desk top, and as a poster in the store. Coloring is not my specialty but I like to give it my best shot every once in a while.

If anyone reading this is an awesome colorist and ever wants to collab on something, I am always looking for someone who is good at coloring and likes doing it.

Ethan

Hey y'all,

First off, thanks for faithfully coming to axecop.com and reading the comics, and for encouraging your friends to come.  The explosion of Axe Cop happened without the help of any publishers or commercials or promoters.  It was totally organic and word of mouth.

Of course, running a site with this traffic costs, and being able to create and produce these comics take up lots of time, so as you have noticed, we've finally got some ads up on the site.

The thing with having ads is this: you make more money where you have traffic steadily visiting your site every day.  The way we have been doing things, people come by in droves on the day the new episode is released, and many also come by when Ask Axe Cops are released.  The point is that to make the ads really work, we need to be putting up content daily.

So, I was looking at what I, a web-comic newbie, have been doing, and I have been releasing 3-page long episodes once a week on monday, then Ask Axe Cop half-pagers on wednesday and friday.  I realized that I could break that 3 pages up into three parts and release them one at a time.  It will feel different at first because you will not get the big long episodes you got before.  I will be numbering the epiodes differently too, by Episode, chapter and page.  But the point is that I will be releasing the same amount of content, but we will be able to pull more in from ad revenue this way.  I have learned since putting this site up that rule number one of a successful web comic is daily content, so I'm making the switch.

This is just to let you know we will be making this change starting tomorrow.  The new episode of the Moon Warriors will come out tomorrow around noon paciic time and it will be shorter then you are used to, but you will get 2 more pages, plus two ask axe cops throughout the week.  In the end, it gives you the same amount of content I have been shelling out, but it spreads it out.  There won't be new content on weekends but there wil be something new to see on the site 5 days a week (as long as Malachai is up for writing it that is.)

So that's what's new.  Look for the new episode of Axe Cop tomorrow.  The Moon Warriors touch down on earth. Will they get to be on Axe Cop's team?

Ethan