4 out of 5

Developed By: Nick Weidenfield, Judah Miller

Covers season 1

Remember that webcomic you liked that – as is relentlessly promoted – is written by a kid and drawn by his older brother?  Yeah, this is the TV show version of it, and make of it what you will that a group of writers – assumedly non-kids – are capable of making 11 minute eps that are pretty spot-on to the comic.  Artist Ethan Nicolle has gone to great lengths to show that younger brother Malachai is responsible for the core ideas and that he enjoys brainstorming the oddness that elder Nicolle will shape into something plotty, so I don’t mean to suggest that this would’ve worked without that initial spark of youth driving the essential ‘innocence’ of Axe Cop’s ridiculously violent premise of a deathless, invulnerable cop who carries an axe and chops off all bad guys heads.  Malachai also gave the Axe Cop world the ‘transformation’ rules, where you get splashed with the blood of something and then morph into that something (or touch something, or drink something… whatever makes sense that day), giving us a dinosaur cop with guns for arms, flute cop, and bad guys galore who follows the same lovably black and white logic.

So credit to Malachai, and then extend that credit to the show’s writers who’ve not only matched the vibe but, for most of the episodes, managed to turn it into something just linear enough to work… a claim that I can’t quite extend to the miniseries Ethan and Malachai have written for Dark Horse.  Sometimes things will slip too far into anti-humor and thus it loses the childish flavor that separates the show from all the other oddball cartoons out there, but on the whole, fans of the comic can see all of their favorite characters realized with more added that fit seamlessly into what’s been ‘established’, and then some truly genius limber scripts that make perfect use of a perfect cast, Nick Offerman the voice we all heard in our heads for AC, and Ken Marino a surprisingly calmly-voiced straight man as Flute Cop.

A few joints shy of Aqua Teen, but a few beers South of Adventure Time, Axe Cop fulfills a nice niche in the burgeoning adult cartoon scene.  Here’s hoping they maintain the vibe for season 2.