Comic Art

Manga Mondays ~ Joe Madureira a.k.a. Mad!

Manga Mondays ~ Joe Madureira a.k.a. Mad!

With this month’s upcoming release of Avenging Spider-Man marking his joyous return to ongoing comics, we thought it was a perfect opportunity to feature the illustrating mastery of Joe Madureira!

Okay, so this is probably not a ‘pure’ manga style. But, I believe Joe Mad’s work is a very interesting addition to our Manga Mondays posts. In my opinion you’ll be hard pressed to find a better example of East meets West comic book styles. The amalgamation of American style comics with the perfect dollop of Japanese manga thrown into the mix creates something that comic fans all over the world salivate over. What I also admire in Joe’s comics is his ability to set a nice pace, guiding the reader through the story in a way that sometimes feels more like watching a movie.

Madureira started his comic book career at Marvel Comics as intern at the age of just 16. But it was in 1994 when he made his name, when he became regular penciler on the huge title, ‘Uncanny X-Men’.

In 1997, he left Marvel to form creator-owned company ‘Cliffhanger’ (a WildStorm Comics imprint), with other big names such as Humberto Ramos and J. Scott Campbell. His comic series, ‘Battle Chasers’ completely blew me away. The only problem: the series was cancelled before the storyline ended. I was gutted to hear this. But to this day, I’d recommend it to anybody. Everything about it was top drawer, from the characters, the story to colours (though I know some people don’t go for that super-glossy look). Hopefully Joe will complete the series one day, I know a lot of fans would love to see it happen.

Here’s the best place on the web to see more of Joe’s work.

Manga Mondays ~ Joe Madureira a.k.a. Mad!
Manga Mondays ~ Joe Madureira a.k.a. Mad!
Manga Mondays ~ Joe Madureira a.k.a. Mad!

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