Sockarang

Sockarang came to a try out when Axe Cop was preparing to go on a mission to fight Bad Santa and the Evil Flying Book. Sockarang has socks for arms, and he can shoot them out and they return to him like boomerangs. In his fight with Bad Santa he got some of Bad Santa’s blood on him and he got Bad Santa powers, which he used for good.

powers: the power of Bad Santa, Sock arms/boomerangs

Appearances

Page 223 – The Kids Don’t Care

So I’m back from tour now. I’ll spare you any details or adventures, no one cares. The big event I’d like to talk about came up two weeks ago with Page 221. It seems I brought Fire Slicer back to life, and I didn’t even know it.

Fire Slicer was killed off in THE MOON WARRIORS GO CAMPING, a one-page story Malachai drew. I recall reading it back in 2011, but I apparently didn’t recall that the Moon Warriors were eaten by the God Of All Bears. I began to see the comments roll in about Fire Slicer being alive again and got all irritated with myself. I’ve been dreading this because in these big battle scenes, I’ve been drawing ancillary Axe Cop characters here and there and then wondering- are they alive? What’s the continuity, here? I had similar concerns about Leaf Man, Hand Cuff Man and Mr. Stocker. I’m pretty sure Mr. Stocker’s dead according to continuity, but I just couldn’t resist putting my favorite non-Axe Cop Axe Cop character in my story.

I went to Ethan a few times asking up on whether a character is alive, but the dude was planning a wedding, drawing a comic, overseeing a TV show and doing any number of other things. Eventually he just said “draw who you want, don’t worry so much about continuity.” That’s not a direct quote, mind you, I don’t feel like hunting through gmail to find that. Anyway. In a kid logic universe, death may mean even less than it does in the Marvel Universe. Hell, Axe Cop was killed on the same page where Fire Slicer returned and it meant almost nothing.

So, yeah, I brought back Fire Slicer by accident. Whoops. Ethan says not to worry about it for reasons that remains to be seen. Let’s just say that God Of All Bear stomachs aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.

KIDS’ QUOTES OF THE WEEK

‎”I’m gonna have the most beautiful wedding,
and if you guys don’t die by then, I’ll invite you!
But if you DO die by then, I’ll invite your
ghosts. Just don’t creep me out.”
                                        -Charlotte, 7 years old

Me: “I dunno Mia, this is a pretty scary story.
I don’t think it’s good for you to hear it before
bed, I don’t want you to have nightmares.”
Amelia: “It’s okay Unca Tommy, when you
say scary things, my head doesn’t
hear them. So I don’t hear them either.”
                                        -Amelia, 3 years old

Page 221 – Sparkling Like A New Man

Yeah, I said someone would die. I didn’t say it would last. Thanks, Ralph Wrinkles!

When I asked Charlotte what sort of a battle cry Rainbow Girl may have as she kills Axe Cop, she blurted out “rainbowtastic!” almost immediately. Makes sense to me.

I’m on tour right now. I had to upload this and the next page, and write up the blog posts for them, in advance. Rough stuff. Right now I’m somewhere off in the south, playing metal for underattended shows. But, hey, it’s travel.

Next week we will finally see Axe Cop get… the perfect revenge. He and Dinosaur Soldier and Army Chihuahua planned it way back on page 6. What could this plan entail? We finally learn next time.

KIDS’ QUOTES OF THE WEEK

Charlotte is looking for Wiimotes and finds one of the empty
silicone sheaths. “I found one, but it’s got no bones in it.”
                                        -Charlotte, 6 years old

“I dreamed I had twenty-nine ice creams with sprinkles,
cherries and hot fudge. Then I throwed up. I ate a
chicken and I throwed up again. Then me and Charlotte
falled down the stairs that were made of toilet paper
and daddy catched us before we broke our legs.”
                                        -Amelia, 4 years old

Page 218 – Fresh And Yummy

Today’s page is entirely Amelia’s writing.

…

…having nothing else to say today, I’ll just leave you with that.

 

KIDS’ QUOTES OF THE WEEK

Singing:
“If you want to be with a girl like me, like me, like me,
You can’t be like that, like that, like that.
You have to be cool, be cool, be cool.
You have to be a werewolf.”
                                        -Charlotte, 6 years old

Amelia’s still in diapers. She’s got a distant look
on her face and that tends to mean only one thing.
Me: “Mia, are you pooping?”
Amelia: “No. …Are you pooping?”
                                        -Amelia, 2 years old

Ask Axe Cop #98 – Insane, Evil, Comatose or Dead

The idea of Axe Cop going insane is terrifying, but not altogether unbelievable.  He is already constantly walking the thin fine line of sanity as it is.  One of my favorite things about Axe Cop is his many contingency plans for any and all situations.  This is one of my favorites.

Reminder that Axe Cop Vol. 5 is out now!  This is possibly my favorite collection.   It is very dense and has a lot of good stuff in it.

Ethan

Page 215 – The Fight Begins!

UPDATE: the splash image is no longer found by clicking the image, but you can CLICK HERE for it.

Let the violence commence!

Today’s page is what’s known as a double-page splash, so it’s technically two pages. When I started plotting out the comic I did it based on how I wanted it to look in print. Ethan says that’s the way to go, but because I wasn’t paying attention to how to leave off for each page, sometimes the pages for the site will leave off on a boring panel. Keeping two media in mind when drawing these things is not easy. As a double page splash it doesn’t really fit in the page format for the site, so handy Axe Cop site-guy Doug worked up a way to have it work out. Click  above for the full-sized page.

The only dialogue here wasn’t written for the comic. In the telling, Charlotte merely started describing the fight. For the beginning of the battle, though, I wanted a big double-page dealie with an introduction to the action. I took the dialogue from something Charlotte said when she was four. We were on the couch and she attacked me, and we started wrestling. She yelled “THE FIGHT BEGINS!” I always liked it as a line that one combatant would yell as a battle kicks off, and it seems very appropriate to Axe Cop. So here we go.

Interestingly- or not- Axe Cop’s “get out of my way!” on Page 3 was likewise based on something Amelia said when she was three. I probably couldn’t communicate what was funny about it, but she was grinning and barreling at me at the time.

First (non-child) blood next week, as we learn how to kill bad guys Dinosaur Soldier and Army Chihuahua style.

KIDS’ QUOTES OF THE WEEK

The following was a playful insult:
“You’re a baby. You’re a baby that
was just born out of a belly.”
                                        -Charlotte, 5 years old

This was a song:
“i only had a sissy if you only had a sissy
with a gun, with a gun, with a gun”
                                        -Amelia, 3 years old

Page 214 – First Aid

Doctors spend years getting degrees and wasting their time. Just stick things back together and walk it off.

…I honestly don’t have much to say today, so this is going to be a pretty anemic blog post. Actually, let me take this opportunity to post something Charlotte and I talked about when she was four years old. We were in her room playing with her stuffed animals, and she established that we live in a world of dogs. I joked that I wanted to eat one of the dogs.

Her: “No, don’t eat one of the dogs. Here…” she brings over a stuffed dog. “This one’s dead.”

Me: “It’s dead??”

Her: “Yeah. So you can eat it.”

Me: “Oh. Well, that’s considerate and creepy. Where’d you get this dead dog?”

Her: “The store.”

Me: “You bought a dead dog at a store?”

Her: “Yeah.”

Me: “What else do they sell at this store?”

Her: “I dunno. Nothing.”

Me: “So it’s a dead dog store.”

Her: “Yep.”

Me: “What’s the name of the store?”

Her: “World Dead Dog.”

Me: “Wow. What’s their slogan? A slogan is something the store says about itself. McDonald’s is I’m lovin’ it. What’s World Dead Dog’s slogan?”

Her: “I’m Puppin’ it.”

Me: “How much can I buy a dead dog for?”

Her: “Twenty cents.”

Me: “What do you do with a dead dog once you’ve got it?”

Her: “You eat it!”

Me: “Do they come in different flavors?”

Her: “Yep. Chocolate and strawberry.”

Me: “This sounds great, but how do the dogs die?”

Her: “Well, they live to 65 years old, and when they get to 75 they die.”

Me: “And World Dead Dog sells them to eat. Aren’t old dead dogs less tasty than fresh ones?”

Her: “No, they’re delicious!”

Me: “So if my dog dies, can I sell it to World Dead Dog?”

Her: “Yep. Fifty-five cents.”

Me: “They’re not making much of a profit, then.”

Her: “No they’re not.”

Me: “Do they have a kids’ meal?”

Her: “They have little monkeys that kids like to eat.”

Me: “Are the monkeys dead too

?”

Her: “Of course.”

Me: “I thought World Dead Dog sold only dead dogs.”

Her: “Well, they sell a few dead monkeys.”

Me: “I see. Do they do catering?”

Her: “What’s catering?”

Me: “Catering is when a restaurant brings food to a place. So do they go to parties and set up piles of dead dogs on long buffet tables?”

At that point I imagined silver catering trays filled with dead dachshunds and burst out laughing hysterically. I’d been trying to hold it in and just couldn’t anymore.

Oh, hey! Ethan and I are throwing a contest on the Axe Cop Facebook page. It’s the GET REVENGE ON RAINBOW GIRL contest, in which you tell us how you’d get revenge on that dastardly villainess. The winner gets a bunch of cool signed Axe Cop stuff. Visit the page for details and enter.

Contest-01

I guess that’s it for this week. Big page next week, and from here on out, not one page of REVENGE ON RAINBOW GIRL isn’t packed with violence. It’s been a peaceful story so far, but things are about to go off. Have a great week.

KIDS’ QUOTES OF THE WEEK

“I have a boo-boo in my mouth
and it’s like a toy for my tongue.”
                                        -Charlotte, 5 years old

“Mommy? I wanna be a drag
queen when I grow up.”
                                        -Amelia, 5 years old

Page 202 – I object!

We are so close to the end it’s crazy!  Next week I post the last page!

I think some of you thought Axe Cop would not actually get married in this story.  I think some of you are worried that Axe Cop being married will ruin him.  I think you’re wrong, but only time will tell.  Axe Cop is always funnier when he has a more sensible, responsible adult type character to keep him in check.  I think him having a wife is going to be great.  And now he also has a baby, named Sam.

In the meantime, how about you check out this 8-bit Axe Cop shirt daily deal over at WeLoveFine?

So, see you next week when it all ends!

Ethan

Page 190 – Parenting

Hey look a new page!  I don’t have a lot to say right now, it’s been a hectic day.  But you could go check out friend of Axe Cop Michael Regina’s new project on Kickstarter, Adamsville.

 

Ethan

Page 189 – Wedding Crashers

Sorry for no post on Thursday.  I went out of town for a few days and did not leave prepared.  Happily, I have a bunch of Axe Cop comics done so you should get pretty regular posts for a while now.  Beyond the rest of this story, I have Ask Axe Cops all the way to #100 to post!  All in due time.

 

Have you kept up on Rugburn’s Axe Cop series?  They take the actual comics and animate the art and add audio.  It’s a nice enhanced viewing experience for Axe Cop purists.  The latest episode is the finale of the Moon Warriors story:

Thanks for reading.  Thursday, the adventure continues.
Ethan

Page 185 – Wedding Day

I can’t believe we have finally reached the wedding day in the comic.  I completely forgot to post today because I had some meetings and was not home all day.  Here is your page, better late than never.  I brought my new Windows Surface with me today, and every time I ended up sitting and waiting, I worked, and I managed to get 3/4 of the final page of this story completed!  I am in love with my Surface with Manga Studio installed.  It is the portable drawing tablet I always dreamed of.

 

The 5th episode of Axe Cop aired on Saturday.  Originally I wrote the first draft of the outline for this one.  A good amount changed, but this is a great episode.  It definitely brings out the darker, weirder side of Axe Cop which is creepy and hilarious.  There were a couple little details in this episode I was not crazy about, but in general I loved it.

I like this episode especially because it is not a story taken directly from the comics.  It just takes elements and makes a new episode, and that is fun to see come together.  I like the take on Bad Santa too.  Cobras on his sleigh, I am proud to say, was my idea.  We called Malachai to ask him what Bad Santa’s plan is and Malachai said without skipping a beat “to kill God and become Jesus.”  He said it like it was so obvious we shouldn’t even have had to ask.  Also, the ending is from an unused answer to an Ask Axe Cop question.  Someone asked what the best day, and worst day of Axe Cop’s life was.  Malachai said the day his parents died.  He was sad they died, but happy he didn’t have to eat candy canes any more.  Then he said he was just medium, but it was the happiest he has ever been… in my notes was the line “medium is the happiest I’ll ever be.”  I never made it into a comic, but it worked so well in this episode I’m glad we got to use it.  It was such a dark, weird answer.  It fit here nicely.

Oh yeah, and some of you guessed it last week, I did the voice of the Chubby doll in the babysitting episode.  In the Bad Santa episode, I was the voice of the upset merman.

Next Saturday is the last episode of the first set of 6!  It’s the summer finale.  I’m excited to see this episode, starring the rabbit who walks and eats coconuts. Don’t worry, another 6 are already being produced, but as of now I have no clue when they will air.

Oh yeah!  And the first appearances of some of my Axe Cop Wedding contributors are appearing here.  Above we have Adam Juda (aka Dr. Googleman) and Garth Matthams on the left.  Also, Thor the Bassett Hound.

Ethan