Rumors of the Axe Cop podcast's death have been greatly exaggerated (I blame Truck of Ninjas). CHOP! will be recording LIVE tonight at 10pm Eastern if you care to join us. You'll be joining dozens of other Axe Cop fans in the live chat room.

If you can't join us at least call in a comment to our new phone line:206-337-8138 and check the website tomorrow for the 5th episode. Of course the best to do is subscribe in iTunes. Here's the info:

Join us live @ 10pm EST: http://www.chopcast.com/live/

RSS: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Chop

Subscribe in iTunes

I know I should have taken a break today, but here is your episode… and happy Memorial Day!

Today's big news is that the BABY MAN SHIRT is available at Topatoco for pre-order until Wednesday.  There are four colors available til Wednesday, after that it will not be available til later in June and only in the most popular color.

The new STICKER SET is now available too:

There has been complaints that certain things like the “always shift” are not in this set.  Well, I made this set a while ago and ordered it and it just now came in, so that stuff did not yet exist when I ordered these.  If these sell well we will do a second collection and things like the always shift will be included.

I hope it's been a good Memorial Day Weekend- it has been here.  See you Wednesday.

Ethan

On Monday we will be releasing two things in the Topatoco Axe Shop.  First, we will be doing a three day pre-order for the new Baby Man Dance T-shirt.  We will be offering multiple colors for the preorder, so during the 3-day period the preorders are available you can pick your color.  Once the shirts go up permanently, the color choice will be narrowed the the most popular preorder color.  Here is the design:

We also will be releasing a sticker set of 5 stickers!:

So keep your eye on the site Monday to get your hands on this stuff.  These are two items that were long overdue.

Ethan

It is a very silent, admittedly skim page, but it is a big new development in the Baby Man mythos, so here it is…

Bad news about CHOP! the Axe Cop podcast… for now, it is on hiatus.  I may find a way to keep it alive, but it is something I never could have done without James and John taking the reins.  James is a pretty busy guy and the podcast just wasn't accomplishming what he thought it would so he has decided to pull the plug.  Don't consider it dead forever, but it is on hold at least for now. 

Don't forget, the Axe Cop painting print is for sale in the Axe Cop Art shop.  There are still Wexter prints available too.  My Dad just framed the one me and Malachai got and it's a beauty.  See you Monday!

Ethan
  

Yesterday's Ask Axe Cop about Axe Cop's rock band was an instant favorite.  Tim Wille, a devoted fan of Axe Cop put together this audio from a live performance of the concert portrayed in that episode.  It's hilarously well done, and though I agree with him that his vocals do not sound like what I would imagine Axe Cop's singing voice would sound like, the intro section alone is worth listening to and I laughed my way through the whole thing.  You can check it out here.

If it wasn't obvious, a lot of the inspiration for this came from Malachai's only exposure to rock bands, and that is the game Rock Band for the Wii which I bought our sisters for Christmas.  He loves the song Ring of Fire and whenever we listen to my iPod he asks me to play it, sometimes over and over.  Our 12 year old sister Megan could almost be given a co-author credit on this one, she kept reccomending songs and Malachai would “axe copify” them.  In fact, I think it was her idea to make Baby Man be the dancer.

Speaking of Baby Man, tomorrow we learn more about the mysterious rug cutter in the continuation of his subplot.  See you then.

Ethan

Today is a great day.  Today we release the Micharl Maher painting print and we find out if Axe Cop has ever been in a band in Ask Axe Cop #36:

And now, I know a lot of you have been waiting for this one, so here it is.  We are now offering the Axe Cop painting by Michael Maher in the Axe Shop.  We are offering 25 signed by Malachai and I as Axe Cop's creators.  I realize it would be great to get the artist to sign this, but it's not really within our means to make that happen, sending prints all over the US, packing and unpacking them would become kind of a mess.  So if you really want yours signed by Michael you can probably try to catch him at a convention.  This is a very beautiful painting and will look awesome framed on anyone's wall.

If things go as planned we will be doing Chop Cast #5 tonight.  Stay tuned.  More Baby Man revelations on Friday, and the story Malachai and I are working on now… I can't wait til you read it.

Ethan

Today Malachai and I were signing Wexter prints with silver sharpies and he said “I love being famous.  Do you love being famous Ethan?”  What made it so funny is that he really doesn't know what fame is, he just liked writing his name in the cool marker on the prints.  To him that was enough awesomeness right there.  After we finished signing and I packed all the prints up, I finished today's episode…

On wednesday, if all goes as planned, we will be releasing the second full color Axe Cop print in the Axe Cop Art Shop.  It will be the Michael Maher painting pictured below. 

Like the Wexter print, we will be offering a limited amount signed.  We will only offer 25 up front, but the signed edition will cap at 100.  But to not wear Malachai out we are doing them in sets of 25.  So while your print may be numbered #2 of 100, #50 of 100 may never be made… it just depends how much Malachai is willing to do.  So keep your eyes on the store for that and I will announce it when the prints are made available.

I am looking forward to the Ask Axe Cop coming out on Wednesday… “Has Axe Cop Ever Been in a Rock Band?” 

Ethan

Friends,

If you have not yet listened to the CHOP!, I want to let you know we have adopted it as the official Axe Cop pod cast and I have decided to become a regular part of the show- this week's episode featured an appearance by Malachai and I.  But first, today's comic episode brings us new information about Baby Man…

So, back to CHOP.  Here is the situation:  the downloads have not been real substantial on the show, and if they don't pick up over the next few episodes we will have to chop its head off.  We have different things we want to try on it, but the main thing we are using it for is as sort of a commentary on the comic itself.  James and John discuss the comic as fans and I chime in and reveal some of the inside baseball and how different things came about.  It's a lot of fun.  We also plan on doing some contests where you could win a signed Wexter print or become one of the background stand in characters on an Axe Cop page.

If you have listened and have suggestions, feel free to send them our way.  I think that if you are genune Axe Cop fan this show is a lot of fun.  So please subscribe on iTunes or go to the site and give it a listen.  Last Wednesday's episode featured anappearance by Malachai himself:

We have more work to do on CHOP and most of that I am leaving up to James and John because I have comics to draw, but I hope you'll give CHOP a listen, and become a fan on Facebook.  If you enjoy CHOP and have friends who like Axe Cop, please spread it around and share it. 

Remember we are on a M-W-F schedule now with pages.  I am looking forward to next week's Ask Axe Cop.  See you Monday!

Ethan

It's good to be back to the birthplace of Axe Cop.  It's been harder to get work done, but here is a new page for you… thanks for being patient during the transition.

I wish I could give you more details about the purpose of the trip, but it I will say it is to work on an epic Axe Cop story.  My brain is a little drained right now (as it usually gets when I get up here… I am not used to the environment, my 6 year old brother, 12 and 13 year old sisters all battling for attention… it's exhausting).  I will still have to strategize to get Malachai's brain open.  In general I have been bribing him by trading him Axe Cop writing time for time playing games on my iPod Touch.  I am pretty sure it's the chainsaw in Zombieville on my iPod that inspired the chainsaw in Chapter 2 of Axe Cop.  Whatever happens, we have an big month ahead of us.  With any luck I will get Malachai on the Axe Cop podcast soon.  Thanks for keeping up.

So, my plan is to try to do a Mon-Wed-Fri schedule with an Ask Axe Cop usually falling on Wednesday.  Today I didn't have any Ask Axe Cop material, and I felt the story had been on hold long enough, so I did a story page.  Expect a messy month, since writing time with Malachai takes priority over everything, I'll do my best to keep it on schedule, but my number one goal is to write an epic with Malachai.  I love this kid!

Ethan

photo by Zero Dean

I arrived in my little brother's home town last night.  My computer is now set up and a new page is started, but as you can imagine I am in a new environment.  We had Zero Dean come by today and snap pictures of Malachai and I.  He is on a trip all over the US taking pictures.  If you have a moment, check out his web page.

I am pretty disoriented still… I am hoping to get onto a Monday/Wednesday/Friday schedule with the comic, so I will update tomorrow.  Wednesday would usually be an Ask Axe Cop day, but I think I will do story pages on Wednesday and Friday this week.

My level of distraction is way up now that I am in a house full of younger siblings, and especially since this is the beginning of my first visit back since the Axe Cop Christmas that will go down in infamy.   Bear with me this month… getting work done will be hard, but the big goal is writing.

I was interrupted about 17 times during this blog.

Ethan