Marvel Years
Joe Madureira, also known as Joe Mad, began his comic book career with Marvel in the pages of the anthology series Marvel Comics Presents, illustrating an eight page story. The sparked interest in his unique creative style landed him the artistic chores on Uncanny X-Men in 1994 during Marvel’s Age of Apocalypse event. Joe Madureira’s style is heavily influenced by his love of Japanese manga, which in turn influenced the rest of the American comic book industry.
Cliffhanger
In 1997 Joe Mad left Marvel to pursue his own series at Wildstorm Comics, under the Cliffhanger imprint. Battle Chasers, a sword and sorcery tale mixed with steampunk elements, was an instant success when it debuted. However, the rave reviews turned to harsh criticism as the series was plagued with extremely long delays. Madureira produced a total of nine issues during his four year stint with Cliffhanger, even going so far as to cancel issue #10. Battle Chasers was put on indefinite hiatus as Madureira formed the game development company Tri-Lunar, and focused on his one real passion, video games. Madureira did not return to comic books until late 2007.
Video Games
With Tri-Lunar Joe Madureira created concept art for the game Dragonkind, which was cancelled when Tri-Lunar went out of business. Next he worked for Realm Interactive, and continued to work for the company after it was acquired by NCsoft, contributing on the game Dungeon Runners. In 2007 Madureira was hired as the Creative Director for THQ, to develop Vigil Games’ Darksiders, and worked with writer Joe Kelly.
The Ultimates & Aspen
Madureira teamed with Jason Rubin to develop the first creator-owned series for Apsen MLT, Iron and the Maiden. The series, created and written by Rubin, is an interesting mix of “1930’s gangster films, Escape from , and Beauty and the Beast”. Madureira provided character concept art along with Jeff Matsuda. The series has been renamed The Iron Saint as a result of a legal battle with heavy metal band Iron Maiden over trademark infringement.
Joe Madureira returned to the House of Ideas in late 2007, providing covers and interior artwork for the miniseries The Ultimates 3, written by Jeph Loeb. The duo followed the successful run of Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch ( Ultimates and Ultimates 2), providing a welcoming change of style to the Ultimates line, evident by the large amount of preorders. However, the early expectations of the series fell flat by the end of the series, most critiquing the story rather than the art.
Joe penciled the first story arc of "Avenging Spider-man" (written by Zeb Wells) in November 2011. The story featured Spider-man teaming up with Red Hulk to address a Moloid threat under New York.
He did a three-issue stint on Savage Wolverine, pairing Marvel's busiest character with Elektra.
He was originally set to work with Matt Fraction on Inhuman, but Charles Soule replaced Matt prior to the book coming out.
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