Graphic Novel Review: Axe Cop Vol. 5: “Axe Cop Gets Married”

Spoilers!

This book is a print version of two of the main stories, “The Dogs” and Axe Cop Gets Married. The stories are sandwiched between a bunch of “Ask Axe Cop” shorts.

In “The Dogs,” Fwinky Dog is introduced as a super dog next to Army Chihuahua, Ralph Wrinkles, and Presty the Pug. Fwinky Dog was used as a ploy to make the villains, the Siberian Witch Doctor twin cats, Iggy and Willy. The cats die, and turn into mummies. They also turn Fwinky, and the other dogs into mummy monstrosities. They built a machine to turn every living thing into mummy cats. Axe Cop finally gets involved when he finds a flying sea horse with arms in front of his window. Dinosaur Soldier and Axe Cop go to a magic pencil shop, and Axe Cop draws himself a flying chameleon. They make it to the cats’s lair, and kick a whole lot of ass as mummies. They end up having to go to hell to speak to Hell Chicken, who bears a striking resemblence to Hellboy. They make it back to the surface, and go to defeat the cats. Comes to be that the scientist screwed up, and made them evil. Axe Cop helped the scientist out, and sent the cats to Mouse World, and they were so happy, the curses stopped working.

The title story, “Axe Cop Gets Married,” is the only way love, and the character of Axe Cop, could ever be in the same story. But this sure does it.     The beginning is the introduction of Sam and Max, orphans that blown to an alien planet due to the school going nuclear. Max transformed into a bat boy, while Sam transformed into a monkey with an undead tail. They learn to use their powers with their alien friends, until they are shipped off due to impending doom. They come back to Earth, but fall on lonely, hard times. Axe Cop comes to them, and adopt them after getting ice cream. This leads to Axe Cop needing to find a wife because these kids need one. He goes to Vegas to find his wife using science, and the scientists find out that he is the perfect man for every woman.  He has a bunch of fails, until he finds Axe Girl. Their date consisted of fighting on dinosaurs, killing people with free poison soda, and killed bad guys in their sleep. they make it back to Earth just in time to thwart the ultimate robot, “The Destroyer.” It was so powerful, it could destroy the Earth in 50 punches. They needed to stop it before it hit 50.

They destroy the robot, and take a head home. He brings the head, and Axe Girl, home. Axe Cop shows the head to Max, who freaks out. Axe Cop decides to keep his promise to his childhood friend, and get married at the Laptist Church.  As the Axes make plans for their wedding, they find a normal looking guy robbing a bank. It turns out that he has an alien heart, and he can teleport. The Laptist Church is ground zero for all of the aliens that are stealing. The aliens have kept trying to hypnotize the Axe family, but since they ate hypniotize-proof food. They can never get hypnotized. They meet with the aliens posing as Axe Cop’s friends, and Axe Girl won’t take care of kids. She would rather kill bad guys. Axe Cop couldn’t love her,  and they split. He is so innundated single women, now, he takes his kids to build decoys and traps. When he puts his kids to bed, he realizes that he has always had a secret crush on Water Queen. He takes her on a date to the best fighting restaurant on Earth, to prove he is the greatest fighter. After defeating the 3 best fighters, the 3 fighters combined into a sumo wrestler. To defeat them, Axe Cop uses a move so destructive, he destroys the two neighboring provinces. After the destruction, Axe Cop proposes to Water Queen, and she says yes. It’s the wedding day, and Water Queen is taken to help an alien posing as a little girl.

This story goes into the final act, with Water Queen defeating an entire planet of straw men. This was part of the alien plot to take over the plan. The aliens hypnotized her guards, and take her away. Axe Cop gets a ransom note, and go to get her. The Laptists attack, but Uni-Man turn them all back to normal. They find out that the aliens plan to take over Earth as well, starting with Australia. So, Axe Cop go to save Water Queen, and the kids go to free Australia. The kids show up, only to get taken hostage by Evil Bunky. Axe Cop makes it to the leader, but Bunky interferes.  Max and Sam regain a bit of strength, and Super Hypno Monkey Bat Man. Using a bit of teamwork, Monkey Bat Man and Axe Cop team up, and they hypnotize Bunky to be good. They all team up to fight the shapeshifter by fusing together into Super Hypno Double Monkey Bat Man Axe Cop Family. That wasn’t enough, however, so the family bring in Wexter, so they have the firepower to make it happen. Axe Cop creates a tear sparrow, and follows it to Water Queen. He saves her, and she begins to control all of the water on the planet. It turns into a giant water serpent. It was so powerful, it ripped the shapeshifter’s head off. The aliens die, the straw people get their planet, and Axe Cop marries Water Queen.

As awesome as these stories were, they do not warrant a buy, since you can get every single page of this book right on the site. The pages at the end were nothing of interest, just a collection of pictures of the wedding. I cannot stress this enough. There is no reason to buy this book, at all. It’s handy to have it collected like this, but 15 dollars for something that was free is silly. I think this is a silly cash in from Dark Horse because of the returning show. 10 dollars for the digital book is a little better,  but still it still doesn’t do enough to make me want to buy it for my personal collection. Dark Horse needs to work on making incentives to buy further books. The book is only getting this score because the stories were worth the re-read.