Axe Cop, the crime-fighter who takes on random evil forces in the hit webcomic of the same name, comes to life in a fan video that stays startlingly true to the source material.

Director Peter Muehlenberg was in film school when a friend introduced him to the webcomic, a viral sensation that’s tracked its ax-toting protagonist for more than 80 episodes. Muehlenberg gave Axe Cop one read and thought, “I have to make this,” he said in an e-mail to Wired.com.

The bizarre characters in Axe Cop — including unique bad guys like Pretzel Head and Dr. Doo Doo — sprang from the imagination of then-5-year-old storyteller Malachai Nicolle. Older brother Ethan Nicolle, a professional writer and comic book artist, helped Malachai turn his wild stories into a one-page webcomic.

“Everything in Axe Cop started in Malachai’s head,” Ethan Nicolle wrote on the comic’s website. “All I do is sort it out and draw it…. Enjoy these comics, they are a fun slice of the mind of a 5-year-old boy processed through the pen of a 30-year-old comic artist.”

Muehlenberg’s fan video, which he posted on YouTube late last month, turns the first Axe Cop webcomic into a 2-minute blast of cheesy flames, dinosaur blood and exposition. He said he shot Axe Cop the Movie: Part 1 (embedded above) over three days on a $300 budget. When asked about the future of the project, Muehlenberg said there’s a good chance he’ll make YouTube videos of the webcomics’ second and third episodes.

“Beyond that, I don’t really have a budget to keep it going, at least at the super-high quality it needs to be,” said the 23-year-old filmmaker, who lives in Melbourne, Australia.

Here’s to YouTube ad revenue.

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