A serial strip scripted by Donne Avenell and mostly illustrated by Enrique Romero, it ran in British newspapers from 1978 to 1986. The setting is a post-nuclear war Britain, where the survivors live in a Domed City. Axa is one citizen of this city, and she refuses to live as a cute but useless brood sow. She makes a daring escape into the irradiated wilderness, and encounters other groups of humans in various states of mutancy scraping by as best they can. As it happens, these tribes take one look at the nubile Axa, and decide she'd be ideal for breeding out their deformities. Axa declines, though this almost always triggers a struggle.
This work contains examples of:
- Break Out the Museum Piece: After Axa escapes from the City in a Bottle into the wild, dangerous post-apocalyptic world, she discovers a museum being Reclaimed by Nature, and explores it. There, Axa finds a double-edged sword and jeweled scabbard. She appropriates these, and adds them to her Nubile Savage ensemble.
- Chiaroscuro: Being a regular comic strip printed in British newspapers, Axa is drawn this way perforce in a monochromatic medium.
- City in a Bottle: The Domed City where Axa grew up, and from whence she escapes. There's another domed city, too, built under the sea.
- Domed Hometown: Axa was born and raised in a domed city that kept her safe from the radiation and the mutants of her post-apocalyptic world. However, she refuses to be a mindless baby-maker in her society, and escapes from the Domed City into the perilous wilderness outside.
- Everything Trying to Kill You: Much of the usual fauna have mutated into giant, man-eating monsters. Even some of the plants have become homivorous. Those humans and near-humans that don't want to bed Axa try to slay her.
- Faux Action Girl: While Axa can swing her sword and fight off nasty, hungry creatures, she mostly relies on muscular males or her robot bodyguard Mark to protect her.
- Gladiator Games: One of the first sizable settlements Axa encounters is built around a casino. Losers with no way to pay off their debts get shunted into an arena to fight for their lives, both to amuse the crowd, and for others to make wagers on the outcome.
- Love-Interest Traitor: Jon encounters Axa in the wilderness, and claims that he has forsaken the Domed City to be with her. Axa catches Jon radioing his position, and discovers too late that she's being captured and taken back to the Domed City. Jon also tries seducing Axa with the pleasures of civilized life as part of a Secret Test of Character.
- Magic Skirt: Axa's loincloth never lets the viewer get a look at her nether region, no matter how she's positioned or how kinetic she's being.
- Nipple and Dimed: Never. Any time Axa needs to fight for her life or her freedom, her makeshift bandeau top will desert her. Axa's bare breasts almost always show nipples.
- Nubile Savage: Axa shreds her Domed City uniform, and fashions the tatters into a bandeau top and a loincloth.
- One-Word Title: Only One Name-type Protagonist Title.
- Rescue Sex: After being rescued by a cute guy, Axa routinely shows her gratitude via naked snugglies. No actual coitus is shown, but there's plenty of skin-to-skin contact depicted.
- Secret Test of Character: The first time Axa is captured and returned to the Domed City, she's subjected to a series of deadly trials. After surviving them all, she races through an airlock door, only to find herself in the Dome Director's office. He reveals that Axa is worthy of being an emissary to other domed cities, and sends her forth.
- Standard Post-Apocalyptic Setting: The comic is set in a post-apocalyptic world, after "the great contamination". Small enclaves of humanity survive in domed cities, surrounded by shambling mutants, giant mutated fauna, and scuttled ruins being Reclaimed by Nature. Axa escapes her Domed Hometown and discovers other tribes of humans, most either scraping by as lawless savages or living under the leadership of a Well-Intentioned Extremist.
- Stripperiffic: Most of the time, Axa ambles about her ravaged world wearing only a bandeau top and a loincloth made from the tatters of her old Domed City uniform. That bandeau top routinely deserts her whenever Axa has to fight for her life or her freedom.
- Weapon-Based Characterization: Matt uses a bayonet tied to one end of a staff in strip #14 to kill a giant spider poised to devour Axa. A scrounged knife is a fine weapon for a Nubile Savage, but requires close combat to be effective. By tying the bayonet to a long staff, Matt increases its slash / stab range while keeping himself away from hostile claws and fangs, a sign of a Combat Pragmatist.
