The AXE COP saga began on a Christmas visit to see my family. My Father, a man with very healthy loins, has managed to produce a variety of children, ranging from me, a 29 year old comic book artist, to my 5 year old brother Malachai, a 5 year old boy genius, with four other siblings in between. During the visit Malchai was running around with his toy fireman axe and he said he was playing "Axe Cop." He asked me to play with him, and I asked what my weapon was... so he brought me a toy flute (actually a recorder). I told him I would rather be Axe Cop then Flute Cop, and he seemed just fine with being Flute Cop. The story that followed became more and more brilliant, until I couldn't contain myself and I had to draw the whole thing into a one page comic. From there the saga continued, and over the course of my week-long visit we cranked out the first four episodes of AXE COP. I posted the comics to my blog and on Facebook and they got great responses. I decided to give AXE COP a home on the internet here and attempt to continue the saga as often as I have time to draw them, and I can get Malachai to write them.

The writing process is basically just me quizzing Malachai as he develops the saga. I'll just try to pry all the details out of him and write them all down until something like a complete little story has been formed. Everything in AXE COP started in Malachai's head, all I do is sort it out and draw it. Here is a video of the writing process. So enjoy these comics, they are a fun slice of the mind of a 5 year old boy processed through the pen of a 30 year old comic artist.

Please send us your comments and questions, but keep in mind a child is present, so watch your frickin' language.

-Ethan Nicolle 1-20-10

photo by Zero Dean

The first 5 episodes of Axe Cop were put online as web comics on January 25th 2010 and they went viral in a matter of days. Three days after AxeCop.com went online it was Entertainment Weekly’s “Site of the Day.” The Twitter-sphere was on fire with Axe Cop, and fandom spread rapidly across the internet. In four days the comic had 1,800 fans on Facebook (on a fan created page) and the number doubled two weeks later. The video of Ethan and Malachai creating an Axe Cop episode shot to 14,000 views, AxeCop.com crashed twice and saw 30,000 to 52,500 unique visits per day it's first two weeks online. In one month it had nearly 750,000 unique visits.  Axe Cop was listed as the 89th most popular search term on Google just four days after the site was posted, and every day vast numbers of news sources and blogs, personal and professional, have written or Twittered about their love for the series including MTV, NPR, GQ, USA Today, Detroit News, CollegeHumor.com, Wired, Dark Horse Comics, Kids.Woot, Cracked, and Wizard Magazine’s Geek Chic Daily. 

Malachai Nicolle is a five year old kid from Washington who loves Dinosaurs, Ben 10, video games of all kinds, and anything involving bad people getting destroyed.

Ethan Nicolle is a 29 year old comic artist/writer living in Los Angeles. He is the writer/artist/creator of the Eisner Award nominated Chumble Spuzz (SLG Publishing). He currently has a pilot optioned at Cartoon Network and is working on his next graphic novel.