It's been a long time since we updated the Ask Axe Cop episodes. The good news is that we finally have, and today's episode features art from Plants VS. Zombies creator Rich Werner! Rich is a big friend of Axe Cop and was cool enough to draw his rendition of “Zombies VS. Plants” in the last panel. Check out a bigger version here (click to enlarge):
PvZ remains one of Malachai and my favorite games ever.
Hopefully you will be seeing a lot more updates from us in the coming weeks. I have plenty more Ask Axe Cop and story material from Malachai from this visit I have been on. I want to try to put out a few pages of story and one Ask Axe Cop per week once I get back to LA.
If you weren't at Stumptown in Portland, the panel we did was filmed and is up on YouTube for your viewing pleasure. Shawna Gore, our amazing and awesome editor joined as the moderator and it turned out to be a pretty fun Q&A. Shawna had recently found out that she was among the lay-offs at Dark Horse just before this event, so that definitely brought us down, but the joy of Axe Cop over ruled our gloom. Still, just looking at the still shot of this video I am trying to imaginee making an Axe Cop book without Shawna there and I can't. We'll always be friends but I really going to miss you as an editor Shawna.
Next episode should go up on Tuesday as usual, see you then!
I had a great time at Stumptown in Portland. Thanks again to Indigo and everyone else who made it such a great experience.
I have a new Ask Axe Cop in the works that will have a cool little surprise in it. Other than that, the best links of this weeks really are in the last blog entry with all the videos including one from CNN. If you haven't checked those out, do it now!
Also: I apologize to those who were going to come see me in Lancaster, PA. We are going to reschedule that trip for a few reasons. Mainly bad planning on my part. So my trip to PA on the 27th is cancelled for now. I do hope I can make it out another time though.
Ok something in the embed code has made these videos screw up this blog I have attempted to post (and have had to retype) about 3 times, so i am just doing links. Three different TV appearances came out online today by some strange happenstance, so here they all are…
You are probably wondering why you are seeing a fresh new Axe Cop episode posted bright and early on a Tuesday morning. Well, welcome to the new paradigm shift, CollegeHumor.com has joined Axe Cop's team! Basically, we have partnered up. CollegeHumor is posting Axe Cop episodes on their site, and we are linking back to them from our site. We give them content, and they give us traffic. It's a beautiful thing. Huge thanks to every one at College Humor for helping spread the Axe Cop love. I encourage you to go to their site and check out what they have going on over there. Car Sondrol, the man behind the awesome sound tracks and sound design of the last couple Axe Cop motion comics does a lot of the music in their videos.
Today's episode is DOUBLE STUFT. I mean, it is twice the usual size because I loved both of these pages so much I wanted them to post at the same time. This whole scenario with the unicorn and the brain is one of my favorite insane ideas Malachai has ever come up with. I have been excited to post it ever since he came up with it when I was visiting him last Christmas. Mice and babies… now we know why they have that look in their eyes. They are constantly thinking about unicorns.
It's been another good week, especially on Twitter. Big thanks to Brian Posehn, Damon Lindelof and Felicia Day for their twitter promotion of Axe Cop. I'm excited that people are enjoying the Bad Guy Earth series, it's my favorite thing we have done so far and I am really looking forward to releasing the final issue. Also, we got these new Bat Warthog Man tee shirts!!
I'll be at Stumptown Comics Fest in Portland this coming weekend. I'll have some posters and books on hand and will be doing comissions. I'll also be doing a panel with my awesome editor Shawna Gore. Also, this just in, I will be in Lancaster PA at Franklin & Marshall college speaking on the 27th, then that weekend I will be in Anaheim at Wizard World. I'll be all over the place that week! Get the details on those appearances in the Appearances section of the web site.
Well this blog has gotten long. I hoped you enjoyed today's episode as much as I did. See you next week at our new time!
It's a big day. Bad Guy Earth #2 hit shevles today. Malachai and I got our early advance copies yesterday and sat together and read through them. It was pretty cool. Here I am on my second month-long visit working with Malachai on our next series of stories and we take a break to sit there and read the comic we created last time I spent a month with him. Our hard work all paid off and printed into a nice little full color book, and just yesterday morning Mtv Geek named Bad Guy Earth #1 the best comic book of March 2011!. After reading the full comic Malachai saw an ad for Dr. McNinja at the end of the comic and looked up Dr. McNinja on my iPad and read three story archs. He is a fast reader… something like 187 words a minute. He read a 200 page Hardy Boys book the first week I was here. He loves to read, and he got all excited to do another team up with the Doc. I need to talk to Chris.
Speaking of Bad Guy Earth, I posted the extended version of the Bad Guy Earth trailer on YouTube. This is the longer version that was created for the Axeiversary event in L.A. at Meltdown Comics. Dark Horse decided to shorten it for the official trailer, but I decided to go ahead post the full version because the voice acting is pricless and I think Hand Cuff Man makes this scene. Here it is:
A lot is on the horizon right now… for one thing, Axe Cop's weekly release date will be switched to Tuesday mornings starting next week. You'll find out why then, it's a pretty cool announcment that I am pretty excited about. Also, hopefully starting in May, I will be releasing 3 episodes a week. Basically, we want to get a volume 2 of Axe Cop done, and one page a week is not going to cut it. Now that Bad Guy Earth is done it's time to dive in and start really pumping out more content. Remember the good ol' days when I was doing 5 pages a week? Yeah me too.
Also awesome… these guys made Axe Cop the topic of their presentation in their Storytelling Class. Some impressive memorization and some very funny moments. I applauded my screen, this deserves a look from any fan of Axe Cop:
What else? Well I did another podcast interview on “With Special Guest” and I think it went pretty well. I definitely got asked some questions I have never been asked before. Speaking of podcasts, I bet some of you are wondering what happened to CHOP. Well, it's unclear, but I know James (the Chop master) has been realy busy and has had to put some things on hold. He may have to drop CHOP, but right now it seems it's up in the air.
I'm bummed too have missed Wonder Con, and especially this guy. I will be at Stumptown Comics Fest in Portland on the 16-17 of this month. Come and get your Axe Cop books and say hello if you live in Portland. I'll also be at Wizard World Anaheim at the end of the month. You can find out more info in the Appearances section of the site.
I'll end by reminding you that StickerYou! is offering custom Axe Cop sticker sheets. You can set up your own sheets how you want and order the high quality stickers in the mail. Malachai and I plastered our notebooks with them.
Well, I hope you got your copy of Bad Guy Earth #2 today. Issue 1 is just about sold out. In my opinion, each issue gets better in this series. Issue 3 contains some of the most insane things I have ever attempted to draw, I'm really excited for it to come out. Also, the current story arch, Bat Warthog Man Can't Find His Friend, is about to hit one of my all time favorite Axe Cop moments you have not yet read. I can't wait for you to see it. Until then, thanks for reading.
We've started another month of writing. I bought two notebooks at Wal Mart and we put stickers all over them that we got from StickerYou!
If you haven't been to StickerYou's Axe Cop page yet, you should go buy some sticker sheets. You can customize your own sticker sheet however you want to.
We raided Dollar Tree's toy section yesterday and snatched up a bunch of stuff to inspire more craziness. I bought Malachai Kirby's Epic Yarn for his birthday and he is loving it, and Dark Horse gave us another stack of Little Lulu books. Malachai loves his Lulu, so we read three stories each night before bed.
It's good to have you back Psydrozon, and after another enjoyable origin story. I hope you the reader appreciates that I gave you a double-size episode in a week where I was traveling by car from Los Angeles to central Washington, visiting family and friends along the way. Usually I would take the week off, but instead I crammed before the trip and got ahead. I can do that now that Bad Guy Earth is done.
Speaking of Bad Guy Earth, it is on the virge of selling out, so find it where you can because that is the last of them. I showed my Dad Bad Guy Earth #3 today and he was floored. He is generally enthusastic about stuff, but he was downright flabbergasted in a good way.
So, in case you aren't keeping up, I am currently up here in Washington with Malachai working on more writing. We are hoping to write a few short stories, answer some Ask Axe Cop questions, and write a new miniseries. Ok, well I am. We'll see what he is up for. As long as I can disguise it as playing he won't even notice. Thanks for reading and for making it possible for me to have such a cool job.
NOTE: COMMENTING FOR THIS EPISODE IS AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS BLOG (changed things up a little)
I love seeing how Malachai pulls from familiar story concepts and makes them his own. In this case, we have another tragic event that created a hero. Of course you don't know how yet, but you know that Army Chihuahua had a friend named Sergeant T, and he died.
I will be somewhat off the radar for the next week or so, but do not worry, you will still get next week's episode. I will be traveling back up to Washington for a month with Malachai coming up with more craziness.
More news… April 6th Bad Guy Earth #2 comes out. For those of you who did not get Bad Guy Earth #1… it's sold out. If you see it on a shelf, that is the last of it. My understanding is that there won't be a reprint of it, so if you missed it, you'll have to wait for the trade. I can't wait for you guys to read the rest of the story, I really think each issue gets better.
Here is something awesome. Axe Cop is now at StickerYou! Go to that link and either pick a ready made sticker sheet from the bottom of the page, or click “make stickers” and make your own custom sheet of stickers using various Axe Cop images. You can size it, and even color it and add lettering to it in some cases. The stickers are nice high quality full color vinyl.
Also, Axe Cop fan, Bob Harris made a custom Axe Cop minimate. As I have said in the past, the great thing about Axe Cop fans is that even though no major video game, movie or toy companies have acted on making any Axe Cop stuff, they just make their own.
Hopefully I will have some fun updates for while I am visiting with Malachai. I also hope to start bumping episode release up to two a week soon if I get enough content. Thanks for joining in the fun.
Ethan
PS You will notice that we now have the blogs under the episodes to keep everything together. We used to have them separate so that there were comments on the episode and on the blog separately. We have made it so that the comments below the blog are for the episode and the blog. Hopefully it's not too confusing, the goal, after all, is to make it less confusing.
In today's epsiode we head back into territory we have all been waiting for, and that is the tale of Army Chihuahua. I love the more logical approach Malachai gives the pet chihuahua at the end of this episode. Where most dogs would whine and grow worried… this little chihuahua becomes full of anger.
Hey if you have not already done so, please go vote on the Eagle Awards– Axe Cop is up for Best Web Series and Best Cover (for Axe Cop vol. 1). We are up against some of the biggest comics in the industry on this, so every vote counts.
We also had a great review go up at Booklist today.
Well, some of my plans have changed. I am having to push the release of Bearmageddon into May, but the cool thing is that it will be in color! I'll be headng up to Washington to spend a month wrting with Malacai very soon, and I hope that after that month I can start posting two episodes a week, or an episode and an Ask Axe Cop. Onward we go!
Are you a fan of Steve Jackson's game Munchkin? Well, I finally get to announce to you the exciting news that the next Munchkin game is none other than Munchkin Axe Cop!
For more info on this exciting development, click here.
