All of Action Ape! in one post, for your convenience...
I came up with Action Ape after anextended period of drawing female protagonists in my comics. I decided to try and do a 'boy's comic'. I was inspired partly by Ian Carney's son, Jake (Then very young, now all grown up), who I've never met. I was a big fan of his work, though. When Ian was writing the comic series Sugar Buzz, he would get his son to write back up stories for artist Woodrow Phoenix to draw. They were amazing! This idea has been recently used to much acclaim with Axe Cop, with artist Ethan Nicolle drawing stories written by his much younger kid brother.
At the time I also had a young nephew (also a lumbering teenage hulk now) and was fascinated by the running commentary he would make under his breath playing with his toys. No lady's legs were safe from the gory bite of his rubber shark, and the Alien Queen and Predator had frequent fights to the death over breakfast. He would even make sound effects looking at action figures in shops, playing with them in his head before he even got them off the shelf. There's such a charm in these spontaneous children's playtime narratives, and I tried to capture the spirit of that.
So this was my attempt at deliberately trying to write like a wee boy. You might not notice much difference!
