Axe Cop: Bad Guy Earth #1

Malachai Nicolle – story
Ethan Nicolle – pencils, inks, letters
Dirk Erik Schulz – colors
Dark Horse Comics - publisher

Yikes, this unexpectedly becomes a giant chore of a book to read after like two pages. And I read it twice to make sure! But yeah, go ahead and stop after two if you want to maintain your adoration for Axe Cop.

I am (was?) a fan of the webcomic, and I think that’s probably why this issue doesn’t work for me. Axe Cop is crazy and cute and ballistic in bite-sized portions. But this is twenty-four pages of bloat. The charm wears thin real quick.

So the initial bit with Axe Cop & Dinosaur Soldier sharing breakfast, drinking brains, searching the skyline -- that’s good stuff. They were pretty sure it was a bad guy planet.... We’d better go explode it, well, that’s just awesome.

And then stop! Stop reading!

Okay fine, I actually also like Dinosaur Soldier’s comment at the top of page three, the one where he goes, Yeah, so I can take a picture of it and take it back to the lab, just because I love the idea of the boys sitting around a folding table in some crusty basement staring at a Polaroid of a distant green planet. So read that. And then stop.

I’m okay with the art – I like the rough white outline around some of the characters & objects, it adds an interesting dimension to the panels that feature it. Page 7 panel 1, the one with Axe Cop and Dinosaur Soldier taking off through the streets, that’s a cool panel, what with the white border and all. Beyond that effect, the art is a little flat. I should be more affected by Wexter’s righteous shades and machine-gun arms, but I’m not.

And I’m a little turned off by the presentation, I suppose. The book is really packaged around the age & relationship of its creators. I know the webcomic is, too, but it feels more forced here, more like a marketing gag.

You know, I kind of feel guilty right now. How could I not like this book? What the fuck, maybe I’ve just lost my soul.