Hey Head Choppers,

I'm in New York still.  Today I am flying home and won't have time to update the next episode of Axe Cop Gets Married in time, so instead I am giving you this new guest episode by Tom Martin.  You may remember Tom's amazing work from Guest Episodes 31 and 32.  I love Tom's work because not only is he a solid artist, he works with the kids in his life to write these comics and really captures the Axe Cop style.  If I ever had the money to hire out work on another Axe Cop story, I'd hire Tom.  I love his contributions!  Also, if you have never heard Tom's band Lich King's song about Axe Cop, you should change that.  It's head chopping thrash metal:

Well, Malachai and I went to Mezco today to see the prototypes of the Axe Cop toys.  They look even more beautiful in person.  We had a lot of fun with the team at Mezco and Malachai gave them a lot of recommendations like that the toys should be remote control and able to tranform, throw fire axes and be made of diamonds.  I'm excited to see more of these as they are released.  They are doing an awesome job.

Ethan

I'm in New York with my family.  My Dad rented a tiny one bedroom apartment and all 6 of us are crammed in here like sardines.  I'd like the people who think Malachai and I live the life of the richa and famous now.  We will be at Webvisions this afternoon.

Also, my Axe Cop and Wexter 16'x20" walnut ink piece is still available on eBay.  You can bid on it for about 11 more hours!

Ethan

I spent a good amount of time drawing this piece of Axe Cop and Wexter and now I am ready to part with it.  It is one of the only large-format detailed originals I have done of the two characters together and this cell phone snap shot of it doesn't even do it justice.  Hopefully it will find a good home.  You can bid on it until Saturday evening.

We are covering a lot of new ground for Axe Cop here.  I am sure people will wonder where a lot of this stuff is coming from, because it's true, Malachai did not script these scenes.  A lot of this stuff he described to me in simpler terms and I pieced together the dialog from various sources.  For instance, some of the dialog here between Axe Cop and the Rainbow Princess is from conversations Malachai has had with my future step daughter, Lily, who is his same age.  She asked Malachai while he was dressed as Axe Cop why he fights bad guys and he slouched back, annoyed, sighing indignantly and answered just as Axe Cop did here.  As if it was the dumbest question he had ever heard.  Malachai looked at the drawing i did of the Rainbow Princess and said her pigtails are dumb, so i used that.

Well I will see Malachai in a couple days.  We will be speaking at Web Visions in New York on Friday.  It's going to be a really fun event and you should definitely come.  Our whole family will be there.  My Dad pursued an opera career in New York before I was ever born and has talked about his time there our whole lives.  It will be fun to  go back to the city he's talk so much about and spend some time as a family.  I am going to try to keep updates posting during this trip.  I may post a guest episode, we'll see.  Thanks for reading!

Ethan

i don't know how you feel. I know that this Axe Cop story is going a lot of new places, but I also feel like it is going a lot of old places.  I am loving it.  It is sort of like 8 year old Malachai is revisiting the concepts of 5 year old Malachai and starting to confront his more developed ideas about life and relationships.  I feel like this is one of those Axe Cop stories where every page stands alone and is just fun in itself.  I think some people are nervous that a story about Axe Cop getting married is "jumping the shark" but I think it's hiarious and fascinating to see Axe Cop attempting to seek "love" even though he still just wants to fight bad guys and not kiss and hug girls.

I spoke at Animex this week and it went really well.  This was only me second college lecture and it went great.  I think I could get used to the occasional lecture, it is a lot of fun and most of the time once I finish talking to a room about Axe Cop they all want to buy the book immediately after I'm done.  I'm actually still in the UK right now, that is why Americans will be getting this page much earlier than usual.  

Hats off to Kailey for single-handedly keeping up with the strenuous task of coloring two pages per week. Some of these pages are pretty complicated and she is keeping up and doing quality work.  I'm excited to keep this story going.  It's one of my favorites.

Ethan