So here we are four pages into a story about Axe Cop babysitting Uni-Baby and already he has totally left his duties to a couple of abusive cyborgs.   Uni-Baby no doubt continues to cry and get punched by the cyborgs and Axe Cop just gallivants around Magic World. 

As I said yesterday, some people were pretty disturbed by the baby punching, and I only want to talk about it some more here because I sympathize with that view.  Some of the “goth” comics I was into in my early days of indie comics would have joke where little children were murdered or beaten or tortured and that crossed a line I could not partake in.  I couldn't laugh at a cartoon child being beaten to death, even though it was not real.  The concept in itself is not funny.

But that is because I make a distinction between men and women, children and adults, innocence and maturity, the strong and the weak.  Malachai does not make a lot of those distinctions.  His punching Uni-Baby is an equal opportunity policy.  He'll punch anyone in his comics because he is not thinking with the distinctions that come later, he is just thinking if you are annoying you get punched.  And he is not thinking psycho abusive step dad punch, he is thinking bugs bunny punch.  Punch and Judy punch. 

Malachai may not be making those distinctions, but I make the distinction that he is a child and I am an adult, so we will view these things differently.  I also know that Uni-Baby is a super baby.  She can survive explosions and suffer minor cuts and bruises. 

In general I am with the people who cringe at the baby hostility.  I find it reprehensible coming from an adult.  Those adults have made the distinction, and they have the full knowledge of the evil they are making light of.  Malachai isn't there yet.  So when we laugh at robots punching babies in the Axe Cop universe hopefully we are laughing at the way Malachai thinks in this instance and not literally at the suffering of a fictional infant.

There you go!  That was my Axe Cop Baby Punching Defense.  Have a good weekend and I'll see you next Tuesday! (unless you read Bearmageddon.  Then I'll see you tomorrow)

Ethan