I picked up the hardcover copy of the first six issues since a recent reboot that they did. It is, quite frankly, amazing. The art is charming and awesome. The writing is superb. Its basically a super-hero comic and a high school drama all wrapped into one perfectly told tale. Holy crap do I love this stuff.

Basically, by the end of the first six issues, you have Spider-Man, Iceman, and Human Torch all living under one roof with Aunt May and Gwen Stacy. Throw in Mary Jane, Kitty Pryde (Shadowcat), and Jessica Drew (Spider-Woman) all going to the same school with them, and its absolutely incredible. I just love it so much. If you aren’t reading this comic, shame on you.

I’m excited to announce a new podcast, A to Zed, that I’m starting with Alexis Santos, a friend who I met while doing the Infendo Radio podcast. As the name implies, we’ll be covering from A to Z with a geeky twist.

Zac Erickson, the creative mind behind Team Jetpack 104, and Alexis Santos, the mastermind behind VG Tribune, are teaming up to bring you a brand new podcast for your ears! A to Zed will be an informal podcast covering a variety of topics, with special guests, and guaranteed hilarity.

Click here for the podcast’s page!

If you don’t know what Axe Cop is, its a comic written by a 6-year-old boy named Malachai, and brought to life by the awesome art skills of his 29-year-old brother, Ethan. Its, as you might imagine, about a cop with an axe, and all of his adventures. With heroes such as Dinosaur Soldier, Fire Slicer, and Uni-Man, its full of delightfully random comic book fun that could only come out of the mind of a child. Imagine those cool scenes you and your friends came up with at recess (I know my friends and I did), except created in beautiful comic book art.

Now, as you can imagine, this is full of tons of violence. Head chopping, explosions, blood everywhere, tons of death. The comic was recently criticized (by someone who I would rather not give any traffic) for exploiting Malachai for his stories and being much too violent, and encouraging the kid to pump out these stories. I call B.S. The charm behind Axe Cop is that you can almost hear Malachai’s excitement as the story is being told. He is so excited and eager to have his older brother tell his cool stories to the world. Do I know if that’s true? Heavens no, but if you understand that this comic was never intended to be anything more than an inside joke for their close family and friends, you can understand that this comic is purely a celebration for the genius and creativity of one cool kid. Its not like a kid of that age could ever comprehend the gravity of everything he’s talking about. Its just innocent fun.

If there is one thing that I would say, its that Axe Cop needs to stick to its roots, and not get too worried about all the publicity, excitement, and hub-ub. Its only been two months since Axe Cop was created at all, and its exploded. If its going to keep going, its going to need to slow down, enjoy the ride, and just have fun with it. Honestly, once a week would be fine if it meant that we could have Axe Cop for a long time. The current schedule of daily episodes is fun, but setting a pace that could be hard to keep up with. It would actually be fun to have an interview with Ethan sometime about this topic. Maybe on some yet-to-be-announced audio type fun fest.

Believe it or not, the Jetpack Command Center has been the most difficult thing to design up until now. I think it turned out well.

This is just a little backstory to set the stage for the upcoming story. The idea of the Elements comes from a team of superheroes that my friends and I came up with back in 5th grade. We may see them in a future arc.

Holy crap, is that what I think it is?!?!?! That’s right, I finally got the first page of the long-promised comic up. I’m pretty pleased with out it turned out actually. I still will be doing these as I have the time, but its still going to be a lot of fun to write.

I’m not afraid to blatantly rip off the idea of a mad scientist, and for some reason I thought the name “The Evilest Genius” was awesome. I’d love to hear your feedback. Next time: the Jetpack Command Center!

I thought I’d post this one for you, even though I really haven’t done much in way of the comic lately. I am in the process of writing the comic, and its going to be cool. Also, here’s a concept sketch for the villain of the first issue of Team Jetpack 104′s comic. Introducing the Evilest Genius!

Step 1. Draw it with paper and pencil, then either take a picture of it or scan it into Photoshop. In this particular case, this was the drawing for my Daily Doodle, so I used the picture. As long as you can tell what you drew, the quality of the picture doesn’t necessarily make that much of a difference.

Step 2. I then create a new layer and ink my original drawing. That is, I draw the simple outlines and lines in general. I use a broader brush for outlines, and a thinner brush for finer details.

Step 3. After finishing ink, I remove the pencil layer and create a layer underneath the ink layer. This is where I do the coloring. Initially, you want to just get a basic color down first.

Step 5. This is probably the longest phase. Layer by layer, add shading and highlights on the drawing. In this case, I started with shadows, did two layers of highlights, then finished with another layer of shading. This adds dimension to the picture, and really makes it “pop.”

Step 6. You can’t really see it in this tiny picture, but the final step is to add the halftone effect (comic book dots). To do this, I merge all color layers, and copy them so there are now two color layers. I then use the Halftone Pattern filter in Photoshop to turn the one on top into black and white dots, then change the lighting of the layer to vidid light, soft light, or whatever works best for the effect I’m going for. You’ll also have to tweek the opacity on the layer to let the colors shine through, but that’s easy.

Step 7. Add everything else around your character. I have yet to try the halftone effect on the background, but I have a feeling its going to look even cooler there. If you enjoyed this, leave a comment!

Surprise! I present the cover art for the first issue of Team Jetpack 104, the internet comic book by yours truly! The comic will be released as I finish each page, but I will not guarantee that I will keep a schedule. After all, I ended up staying way too late just to complete and post this picture.

Anyways, the hope is to have each issue released for purchase on Lulu when they’re done as well, or most likely a cheaper (or free) download. In the meantime, enjoy!

EDIT: When I released this cover, I wasn’t happy with the shading because I knew it wasn’t my best work, so two days later I recolored it and updated the image. If you’re curious, here’s what the old one looked like.

1. Over the next week or so I will be changing hosting companies, so the site may be down for an hour here or there, but when everything’s done, it should be good as gold for the foreseeable furture.
2. I am making a major shift from “weekly strips” to “whenever-they-get-here” pages of a new graphic novel. As such, I will be adding the new strips to Team Jetpack 104: Volume 1 (available on Lulu.com for only $12.15!, I’ll let you know when the change to the book have been made). The graphic novel is going to be a major project of mine moving forward as I have time to do so (I’m a student too, y’know). You can keep tabs on my progress over at DeviantArt.
3. Once the first page of the graphic novel is done, I’m not entirely sure how that will effect the strips. I may have to post those elsewhere to make room for the future. Just a heads up on that!
4. I’m making a serious effort to post more to the Facebook Page. Want to interact with other TJ104 fans? Want to post some fan art? By all means, come on over! Also, you can follow me on Twitter for more craziness. I’d love to have more interaction with the fans of TJ104!