Webcomic / DOUBLE K

THE INCOMPARABLE SUPERCOPS

DOUBLE K
A COP DRAMA LIKE NONE YOU'VE EVER SEEN
A TOWERING TRIBUTE TO ONE OF THE GREATEST TELEVISION SERIES LIKE EVER
AND THE CULMINATION OF THE DREAMS OF A VAST CADRE OF DUDES FROM 4CHAN
Will hit your EYEBALLS from ACROSS THE INTERNET ON APRIL 12th OF THIS VERY YEAR
A new installment EACH WEEK, MWF
BE PREPARED
BECAUSE THIS SHIT JUST GOT EVEN MORE REAL THAN YOU COULD POSSIBLY HAVE IMAGINED

Imagine an 80's Buddy Cop Show, like Starsky & Hutch, or better yet, Miami Vice. Got the bad acting, and cheesy one-liners, and horrible outfits filling your brain? Good. But most of all, do you remember the explosions, the gunfights, and the invincible protagonists who always fought against all odds to save the day? One man over at deviantART did. That man was Nathan "Captain Osaka" Maurer, who decided to resurrect the buddy cop genre with the aid of... the cast of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann?

Enter DOUBLE K, the comic so intense and over the top its name is written in ALL CAPS. Starring Kamina and Kittan as the titular buddy cop duo, DOUBLE K mirrors the story of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann in the world of Teppelin Beach, a Miami Beach parody that is under the watchful eye of the GPD.

What follows in this setting has to be seen to be believed, with fantastic art, brilliant jokes, and enough Gurren Lagann in-jokes to make any fan of buddy cop films and/or of Gurren Lagann laugh and watch in awe as the protagonists do ever greater feats.

Somewhat extraordinarily for a fan-comic, paperback editions of it do exist, evading copyright issues by being sold at a loss. DOUBLE K: VOLUME 0, which covered the first 50 pages, was distributed at Anime Expo 2010 in very limited quantities, and sold out almost immediately. VOLUME 1 covered the first 5 chapters of the book (with earlier pages seeing an exclusive re-mastering), and was both distributed and funded via this KickStarter project. Which succeeded so far beyond its fundraising goals that, ironically, it created substantial delays due to having to print vastly more books than planned.

But sadly, after a year with no updates, Maurer closed his online store and the DOUBLE K website on Smack Jeeves. The comic then remained available only through Maurer's DeviantART account for a couple more years until he, to quote a random DeviantART commenter, "did a hiimdaisy and deleted it all." ^note Not the account, though, just the comic. The account itself is still there, but, as of September 2017, there has been little to no activity in it. Although, he did delete his Twitter and Tumblr accounts, so there's that.

Still, the large readerbase that the comic had gathered meant that an unofficial Imgur mirror was made just a year before the comic's untimely demise. In fact, even the comic's site on Smack Jeeves is not completely lost, as captures of it have been made by the Wayback Machine and can be found through this link.

By the way, speaking of saving copies (or Circulating the Tapes, if you will), feel free to dowload said Imgur mirror and upload it on more reliable long-term hosts such as the Internet Archive. Just to be safe.

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This series contains examples of:

• Adaptational Heroism: Lordgenome started out as the Big Bad in canon, while here he's Da Chief although he is a Spiral addict.
• Adaptational Jerkass: Dayakka was Heterosexual Life-Partners with Kittan in canon, while this version falsified records of him being a By-the-Book Cop so he could transfer him to Lordgenome's precinct.
• Adaptational Villainy: While most characters are faithful to their canon selves, the Jiha village chief is a thug and a drug addict rather than a Well-Intentioned Extremist, the counterpart to Spiral Energy is a drug, and Rossiu appears to be the Big Bad.
• Attractive Bent-Gender
  • The Jiiha village chief seems pretty into that cute young hooker before realizing that "she" is not only a boy, but an undercover cop.
  • Page 71 shows that the village chief isn't the first one to fall victim to this. Kamina's Plan A seems to be dressing Simon up as a woman, and it seems to be a plan with a perfect track record.
  • Oddly enough, when the hookers find out Simon is a cop Simon suddenly has a lot of bodyhair, but the rest of the time is deliberately drawn to be, in the author's own words, "confusingly sexy".
• Art Evolution: A side-effect of the comic being produced in a staggered schedule over the course of several years. Cap tended to use thin, almost scratchy lines in earlier pages, whilst later additions tend to use thick black lining and more prevalent shading. This resulted in Cap completely redrawing 51 of the early pages in order to maintain consistency with the style of the newer pages.
• Author Catchphrase: Captain Osaka claims "THE COMIC HAS OFFICIALLY BEGUN" about every five pages.
• Back-Alley Doctor: Captain Osaka's current idea for Leeron's role.
• Badass Arm-Fold: Captain Osaka says that Kamina just needed to do the Gunbuster Pose here, because he never did it in the series and all. ^note Which isn't completely accurate. Gurren does do that pose in episode three. Granted, Kamina was sitting down on it's head, so it sort of counts.
• Bar Brawl: Kamina evidently has a habit of starting these whenever he needs a lead on a case.
  Kamina: This place is just lousy with desperate assholes, most of 'em just petty crooks... But you'd be surprised how many cough up some real-deal criminal connections after a good old-fashioned bar fight.
  Kittan: ...
  Kamina: Y'know, now that I think of it, pretty much every major arrest I've ever made had a start at this place! Good times, man.
  Kittan: ... That's... That is spectacularly unethical.
• Benevolent Boss: Lordgenome, actually. Sure, he's not happy with Kamina, but a large part of the reason he partnered him up with Kittan was to give Simon some chance to shine on his own.
  Lordgenome: See, what'd I tell you? Five minutes without that idiot and you're already cracking cases like an old pro.
• Berserk Button: "PUUUUUUUUSSSSYYY!". Notable in that it is not a particular character's Berserk Button, but a recurring tactic of Kamina that causes this effect on anyone! Kamina in specific is Chief Genome's berserk button.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Simon is a blushing, stammering kid who doesn't really know what to do without Kamina giving him instructions...unless you threaten Nia.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • As Thymilph prepares to stab Kamina in in the back in the Gunk-Eye, Kittan suddenly bursts in and punches Thymilph through a wall and out of the building while hyped up on Spiral Power as a desperation tactic.
  • A mysterious sniper shoots Thymilph's chaingun out of his hands from off-panel just as he's getting ready to kill the two Ks. Several pages later, this is revealed to be Yoko, who appears to be both observing and protecting the duo.
• Bishie Sparkle: Nia emits these.
• Blatant Lies: Kamina states that there's a subtle nuance to the arrests he makes.
• Bond One-Liner: Kamina attempts this after having rescued Simon and caught Shaku. It falls slightly flat, though.
• Butt-Monkey: Simon's treatment has been absolutely brutal. As per the show, Simon has taken a level in badass by page 100. Kind of. He gets only one good scene all of 117 pages and this happens. Talk about kick the puppy.
• Buddy Cop Show: This is basically the entire premise of/inspiration for the comic.
• By-the-Book Cop: Kittan. Graduated Police Academy with top honors, broke arrest records for his department three years in a row, and as a result created a budget surplus large enough to train the four recruits needed to take up his workload after he left. Except it's all made up — his old chief wanted him out and threatened him if he didn't keep the ruse up.
• Call-Back: The glove compartment of the Jiha chief's car is remembered 37 strips later and its contents are revealed 40 strips after that.
• Charm Person: Inversion: "I think making people surrender all voluntary control of their minds by saying the word PUSSY is Kamina's secret superpower."
• Chew-Out Fake-Out: Kamina tells Kittan the story of a drug bust he handled, and he honestly expects the goody-two-shoes Kittan to berate him over it. Kittan instead proclaims, tears in his eyes, that it's the greatest story he's ever heard, and reveals that he's just as crazy as Kamina, and that his by-the-book image was a ruse established by his former superior (and brother-in-law) Dayakka so he could be rid of Kittan.
• Composite Character: Lordgenome and the Jiha village chief cross this over with Decomposite Character, as the former takes the latter's status as an authority figure who hates Kamina and thinks he's holding Simon back while the latter becomes a common thug.
• Cool Car: Gurren becomes Kamina's souped-up custom kit car...
• Cool Bike: ...And the King Kittan is a flashy superbike.
• Cool Shades: Kamina appears to have at least 2 spare pairs of his trademark shades in his jacket. Kittan also gains a pretty kickin' pair of aviators, and both Simon and Yoko retain their goggles.
• Cowboy Cop:
  • Kamina. Voted 'loosest cannon' in Police Academy, holder of the GPD's highest arrest record... wrongful or otherwise... and the only officer to ever cause more collateral damage than the department could cover. That Kamina. If anything, he's even more Chaotic Good in this comic than the original series. Chief Genome makes it quite clear that Kamina only still has his job because he keeps morale high and everyone thinks he's a great cop. Take this comic for example:
    Kamina on this drunk he was interrogating: They just sounded like a bunch of low-rent dope pushers, but hey, the possibility of doin' a raid sounded a hell of a lot more exciting than taking some slurring dingus back to the station. I let the guy go, but I totally snuck like 30 bucks out when I was checking for his ID, so it wasn't a complete loss.
  • Kittan; his entire record was fudged to get Chief Genome to take him.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Heroic example: Simon to the Jiiha Village chief pumped up on Spiral Power.
• Da Chief: Chief Genome and Chief Dayakka.
• Dirty Harriet: Simon.
• Dissonant Serenity: Dayakka burns his cigarette on a photo of Kittan while maintaining an aura of calm, with the sound of Genome yelling through the answering machine in the background.
• Doujinshi: As of the mass publication of DOUBLE K: VOLUME 1, it could be considered this. The issue of copyright is evaded by the nature of the Kickstarter project funding it: Nate is technically not profiting from the production of the books at all, due to the payment for each covering the production costs of it as well. The rest of the donations go toward setting up a merchandise store.
• Dragged into Drag: Simon is the victim, of course, though it was Kamina that made him do it rather than a group of girls.
• The Dragon: Rossiu Adai appears to be filling this role or Big Bad.
• The Dreaded: Kamina, at least among the prostitutes of Teppelin Beach.
  Gainax Prostitute: Oh no. Not him.
• Drives Like Crazy: Kamina, to the surprise of absolutely no one.
• Dynamic Entry:
  • Kittan manages one of these by opening a door.
  • Kamina leaping out of a garbage can.
• Early-Bird Cameo:
  • Yoko can be spotted 2 pages before her reveal in page 129.◊
  • In this panel, you can clearly see Cytomander and Guame on either side of Tymilph's picture.
  • Kittan's sisters are on his keychain here.
  • Rossiu Adai first appears on the other side of the drug-runners communication on Page 70, and is officially introduced 74 pages later.
• '80s Hair: Viral's mullet, which Kamina (and Cap himself) mercilessly mocks him for.
• Even Evil Has Standards: And those standards include not turning away Girl Scouts — a fact that Kamina ruthlessly (and awesomely) exploits.
• Expy:
  • Several of the prostitutes were other Gainax girls, with Asuka-whore getting the most screentime. Along with Asuka-whore, there's Nono-whore, Lal'C-whore, and Rei-whore. There have been hints of other Gainax girls showing up in the background later. Of course it is also a reminder to the original's Hot Springs Episode, where they were in practically same role.
  • Gendo and Captain Nemo make an appearance...trying to pick up Simon disguised as a prostitute.
• Eye Twitch: Poor Genome.
• Facepalm: Genome's response to Simon and Kamina's BUMP pose.
• Fake Boobs: The most defining feature of Simon's cross-dressing is the fact that he stuffs baseballs in his dress. It's painfully obvious.
• Fantastic Drug:
  • The core-drill-lookalikes, going by the street name "Spiral". The full extent of their effects is not currently known, but they seem to give their users a MAJOR boost in physical power, along with inducing extreme aggression, feelings of invincibility, and hallucinogenic effects. Which really isn't that different from what Spiral Energy does in canon if you think about it.
  • It seems that the ugly side of Spiral might rear itself eventually, in light of Kittan using it as a desperation tactic despite his self-confessed addictive personality.
• Flashback Effect: "And what's this?! The ever-darkening panel gutters would seem to indicate the approach...OF A FLASHBACK"
• Foreshadowing:
  • On page 54, the first time we see Thymilph, his irises are spiralled. 49 pages later, we find out that this is a telltale symptom of Spiral usage, and that he also happens to be one of the primary dealers!
  • Page 129 features a shadowy sniper on a rooftop in the far background, as well as Kittan slyly stuffing some Drills into his left pocket. No prizes for guessing what these 2 hints will lead into.
  • Lordgenome has the same spiral eyes he had in the anime. Everyone assumed it was an artifact of his character design. It's looking like that might not be the case...
• Functional Addict: Lordgenome is eventually revealed to be one near the end of Volume One. While usually the Reasonable Authority Figure that gets stuck dealing with Kamina's antics, and one of the few people that can keep him in check, his not noticing any signs of Kittan's "Ace Cop" status being a lie, and his being unable to stop Kittan and Kamina from throwing a massive party in the station after they arrested Thymilph are a reasult of him needing another fix of Spiral after he'd run out. His reaction to getting more from Rossiu seems to indicate that he's rather peeved with his situation, either...
• Good Cop/Bad Cop:
  • Kittan and Kamina respectively, at least so far.
  • Seemingly on the road to a subversion, with the revelation that Kittan's Good Cop personality was an act.
  • As of page 151, it's been abandoned altogether in favor of Bad Cop/Bad Cop.
• Genre Deconstruction: The comic basically lampshades how Da Chief would probably be driven insane by the antics of Cowboy Cop. Dayakka got so fed up with Kittan's nonsense that he was willing to commit perjury just to get rid of the guy.
• Groin Attack: When Kamina is interrogating a captured gang member, sticking a gun in his face does nothing to intimidate him. Aiming it at his nuts, however, makes him crack like an egg.
• Gross-Up Close-Up: When one of the prostitutes takes a close look at the suspicious-seeming "girl" in their midst, the reader is treated to close-ups of the fake hooker's stubble-covered legs, baseballs stuffed into "her" dress, and beard shadow.
• Impersonation Gambit: Set up and then immediately averted because, "true to form, Kamina immediately pisses away any usefulness this development may have brought."
• Incredibly Lame Pun
  • "You ain't chicken... but you're sure as hell gonna be cooped up for a while!"
  • A full 104 pages later, Kamina and Kittan score a double-whammy when arresting Thymilph:
    Kamina: "I hate to break it to you, pal, but you might be lookin' at some gnarly jail time here. Try not to go... ape.
    Kittan: "No joke, fella. For your own sake, I'd advise you not to pull any more monkeyshines.
• Jerkass: Begins with a 'K', ends with an 'A'. And stops off halfway through for a spot of casual police brutality.
• Kick the Morality Pet: Kamina, of all people, seems to feel like he did this once he realizes just how far he went with the HAZING, especially after finding out just how much of a kindred soul Kittan is:
  "Man, I'm really sorry. Giving booze to a recovering alcoholic, that's over the line, even for me."
• Large Ham: Meta-example: Captain Osaka when describing each page.
• Man Hug: Kamina and Kittan after the latter's drunken confession.
• Manly Tears: Kittan's reaction to Kamina's story.
• Most Definitely Not a Villain: Simon isn't very good at maintaining his cover as a prostitute.
  Lal'C-whore: You ain't no hooker
  Simon: S-Sure I am! I love getting paid for sex acts!
• Mythology Gag: Predictably, there are more than a few.
  • The hookers look like other Studio Gainax female characters.
  • The GPD badge is the Dai-Gurren emblem, except the shades it wear are not Kamina's shades but Simon's star-shaped shades.
  • Just replace drill with police badge and you get Kamina's famous speech.
  • There's also the Gunk-Eye, a dive of a bar that's run by Adiane and Viral.
  • Kamina's gun is the same one Yoko gave him in the anime. You know, the one he almost shot his own nuts off with.
  • On a similar note, the page pic suggests Kittan's going to get a shotgun—the same one he used to try and hold off the Mugann.
  • The Jiiha chief starts rambling about doing impossible feats and how he can see invisible things when he uses the Core Drill.
  • On the page where Kamina kicks the puppy here, in the commentary, Osaka says "poor kid keeps getting left at the altar." This is also what literally happens to him in the finale (though via different means than one would normally expect).
  • A rather savage version of this came into play towards the end of Chapter 5: Kamina is set to be stabbed in the back by Thymilph, just like in the real series. Likewise, Kittan is about to go out in a blaze of Spiral power shortly before blowing up.
    • Captain Osaka points out that Thylimph seems to be gunning for Kamina exclusively, further referencing their "chemistry".
    • Kittan's line after punching Thymilph through the wall of the Gunk Eye is also his final line in the original series, almost verbatim. In both instances it's the first time he truly discovers the power of Spiral, but the context in which it occurs in DOUBLE K is somewhat darker, considering what Spiral has been established as.
  • Simon manning-up when Nia is in trouble is similar to what occurs in the anime.
  • Police Headquarters for Teppelin Beach looks like the capital of Kamina City. Kittan's old police headquarters looks like Dayakkaiser, but with a police hat on (especially fitting since it's run by Dayakka himself).
• Not What It Looks Like: Thymilph is not sure what Kittan and Kamina were doing in that bathroom stall, and he'd frankly rather not know.
• no punctuation is funnier: A staple of the series.
• Nuclear Mutant: The Beastmen are folks mutated by radioactive waste due to the Mayor making cuts on zoning restrictions of where to dump waste.
• Obnoxious In-Laws: Photo bombing at his sister's wedding qualifies Kittan for this. He's also prank called Dayakka enough times to get a special message on the answering machine. It's also why Dayakka fudged Kittan's records and shipped him off to Lordgenome's precinct: he couldn't stand him anymore.
• Oh, Crap!: The village chief. And Genome. And Kamina. And Simon. And Simon again. And Simon again... again. And Kittan. Osaka really seems to like these expressions.
• One-Liner: It's a Buddy Cop Show. Next trope, please.
• Opaque Lenses: It varies, actually. You can see through Kamina's shades in one panel and then they're opaque in another. The same applies to Kittan's aviators. According to Osaka this is intentional, based on which looks better or more badass for the scene.
• Oral Fixation: Kittan keeps a match in his mouth, which Kamina then proceeds to light on his stubble.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Yes. There is no way that a 'woman' with stubble and visible baseballs in her dress will look suspicious at all. This is a good plan... No, seriously, it's a good plan, because it has a one hundred percent success rate.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Chief Genome seems to be a lot more patient and supportive of Simon by himself. He'd just rather not have him talk to his daughter while in a dress.
• Ship Tease: Simon/Nia. Of course it's endlessly lampshaded by Kamina.
• Shipper on Deck: Kamina seemingly goes out of his way to make Simon look good when Nia's around, and even asks him when he's going to ask her out. In front of the Chief (though ultimately the Chief doesn't seem too against the idea — he just doesn't want Simon asking her out while he's wearing a dress).
• Shout-Out
  • The hourglass meter from Max Payne makes an appearance during a bullet time sequence.
  • The Spiral Power drugs are inserted like NUKE from RoboCop 2.
  • Thymilph bags a dual reference to the movie Predator on page 125; he whips out a chaingun, Blain's weapon of choice, and delivers a variation of a line from early in the film.
  • Page 128 continues a long line of ape-related jokes at Thymilph's expense by referencing Bedtime for Bonzo, a comedy movie from the 1950s involving a chimpanzee.
• Sick and Wrong: The Jiiha village chief doesn't approve of crossdressing Simon
• Smoking Is Cool: Kamina smokes (and manages to weaponize the very act of lighting up). Therefore...
• Stuff Blowing Up: Once more, consider the show it's inspired by. Poor Gurrenrod.
• Suddenly Sober: Averted. When Kamina tries fighting Thymilph, all the Gin he drank catches up with him, and makes it a pretty short fight. Played straight soon after with Kittan after he uses Spiral, and he was in a far worse state than Kamina.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: "Just so we're in the clear, though, you're, like, talking about a drive in the sense that we go to the place of your choosing and you, uh, pay me to perform sex acts, right?... N-Not that I'm trying to establish probable cause or anything."
• Talking Is a Free Action: Subverted. At the very beginning of the comic during a bust (but after his big entrance and speech), Kamina has a conversation with the prostitutes he's supposed to be arresting. When he turns to talk to Simon, Kamina then sees that his partner had been kidnapped by their suspect in the intervening time.
• The Teetotaler: Kittan was one. Then Kamina got involved. Spiral getting involved will probably only make matters worse.
• Took a Level in Badass: Being that this is a Gurren Lagann comic, it was only a matter of time before Simon went Badass.
• Throwing Your Gun at the Enemy: Discussed, Lampshaded and Justified by Kamina in his flashback exposition.
  Kamina: You ever try just throwing something at a guy with a hostage? Of course not, who the hell does that? But that is exactly why it works every time.
• Trailers Always Spoil: The artist's comments from page four. Spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and inflection have not been changed. ^note  On the other hand, the Cool Shades gave it away even before the author did.
  dude
  DUDE
  WHO IS THAT MAN RISING FROM THE TRASH CAN
  FIND OUT NEXT WEEK
  hint: it is kamina
• Trojan Horse:
  Kamina: Not even drug dealers are heartless enough to turn away a Girl Scout. So when these dudes saw Simon there all with the badges, the outfit, the whole deal... they were so caught off guard that they didn't even think twice about letting him drag in this huge crate of cookies. But it was totally not cookies.
• Undercover Cop Reveal: Simon does this in a slightly less-than-impressive way. Kamina kicks it up a notch.
• Universal-Adaptor Cast: The entire reason this comic works is because the cast of Gurren Lagann is one. Personalities and character designs are almost completely unchanged (except for Lordgenome), and they fit perfectly in the new setting.
• Unsound Effect
  • C4. Yes, period and all.
  • SHUT.
  • BAIL
  • YES
• Vanity License Plate: The Gurrenrod's license plate reads "KICKRSN", and King Kittan's reads "2THECRB."
• Vigilante Man:
  • Yoko's role in the story, according to the Cap'n. Seems to be a little more complicated than he originally let on; she appears in the Christmas 2011 art with the gang in the GPD offices, in her Yomako attire to boot. Hmmm...
  • Adiane and Viral have a makeshift forensics lab hidden in their staffroom, apparently dedicated to uncovering the truth behind Spiral.
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…: In this case its "When all you have is a wardrobe of woman's clothing, dress Simon in drag."
• Wholesome Crossdresser: Simon's been in a dress since the very first strip. It's pretty much Kamina's only tactic.

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