Axe Cop is a webcomic by brothers Malachai Nicolle (age 5 when the series began) and Ethan Nicolle (age 28 when the series began). Malachai is responsible for the ideas and stories, while Ethan turns them into comics. The first four comics were drawn in December 2009 and posted to Facebook; the website was not launched until January 2010. The site also features Ask Axe Cop, a series of comics where Axe Cop responds to questions from readers. The webcomic has been highly praised, leading to a publishing deal with Dark Horse Comics for both a limited online and print run.

Synopsis

Axe Cop is about the adventures of a police officer who prefers to wield an axe in battle. He is a gruff, tough man, dedicated to killing bad guys. The comic focuses on the times he is called away from the daily grind to help with more complex problems such as rescuing a child from a zombie dog woman, helping Bat Warthog Man find his friends, or babysitting. This generally involves fighting bad guys including the bad guys from other planets. Axe Cop has gathered a loyal team. His first ally is Flute Cop, who goes on to become Dinosaur Soldier (upon exposure to dinosaur blood) and shapeshifts into other forms in other episodes. Axe Cop gained other allies, including Ralph Wrinkles, Sockarang, Leaf Man, Baby Man, The Wrestler, Uni-Man, Uni-Baby, Wexter, Presty, Best Fairy Ever, Bat Warthog Man, Army Chihuahua, Gray Diamond, Liborg, Water Queen, and more. Axe Cop episodes are nominally set in the present day, enlivened with aliens, dinosaurs, zombies, robots, etc., and the episodes tend to feature whatever topic happens to be on the writer's mind, like sea creatures, brains, and especially babies. Little effort is made to keep track of back stories, powers, and equipment. This is not to say that the comic is entirely chaotic: the main characters and their relationships stay consistent, there are persistent world-building elements (most notably the shapeshifting properties of being splattered with blood or a fruit's juice), and a number of powers and items recur (e.g. the hypnotize button on Axe Cop's wrist has not been mentioned again, but the robot arms in his mustache are explained).

Background

Ethan Nicolle had already written the critically praised graphic novel Chumble Spuzz when he got the idea to write Axe Cop. The idea arose when Ethan was playing pretend with his brother, who invented the Axe Cop persona. At the time, the elder Nicolle was working on a graphic novel that he wanted to release as a webcomic, and he intended to use Axe Cop as a way of practicing the medium.

Characters

Critical reception

Entertainment Weekly listed the comic as their "Site of the Day" on January 28, 2010. In her review, Margaret Lyons described it as "all kinds of silly fun" and asked, "Are we looking at the next great comic franchise?" The Detroit News said in their review, "'Axe Cop' is a hoot." GQ named the comic their "Time Waster of the Day" on February 4, 2010. In response to the success of the online comic, Nicolle was approached by several comic publishers to print an Axe Cop series. With help of the Gotham Entertainment Group, Nicolle found that both he and Dark Horse Comics had the same level of interest in the publishing deal, and accepted their offer. Dark Horse published an ashcan copy of Axe Cop for the 2010 San Diego Comic-Con, which included the first five episodes of the webcomic and some of the "Ask Axe Cop" strips. Dark Horse published the 3-issue Axe Cop miniseries "Bad Guy Earth" in the second quarter of 2011.

Awards and honors

In other media

Comic books

Dark Horse Comics had collected the comics into individual volumes:

Television

Axe Cop premiered on Fox on July 21, 2013, as a part of the channel's Animation Domination HD programming block. The series consisted of 12 11-minute episodes in its first season. A second season of Axe Cop, first announced by Ethan Nicolle on the Axe Cop website, began airing on FXX on April 16, 2015, and concluded on June 25, 2015.

Web series

Another animated version of Axe Cop aired on the YouTube channel Rug Burn. The animation was done as motion comics based on the original web comic strips.

Other venues

An expansion for Steve Jackson Games' "Munchkin" featured Axe Cop, with art drawn by Ethan. Axe Cop made a cameo appearance in the second issue of the indie comic book series, The Danger-Squad created by Duran Rivera and published by CrinkleCo Studios. Axe Cop was the subject of a 2012 song by American thrash metal band Lich King.