Illustrator: Joe Madureira

There were several artists that defined the comic book art medium for me, when I first began the love affair way back in the early 90's. Joe Mad was the one among the many, his distinct anime aspects were a forefront for my other love of art, manga, before I didn’t even knew what manga was.

Apparently at 16 he was interning at Marvel Comics, wow, I was still suffocating in a small town outside Joburg then. He began penciling an 8-page Northstar story in an anthology comic which led to Excalibur (a British offshoot of X-Men) before he moved over to Uncanny X-Men, just as I started to pick it up.

After several years at Marvel he left and began his creator owned series Battlechasers at Wildstorm offshoot Cliffhanger. When that went bust he turned his talents to game development for a couple of years.

Many years later he returned to Marvel, much to this boys surprise and excitement, illustrating the Ultimate universes Avengers, which I don’t follow so I skipped it, but thankfully he returned to mainstream Marvel universe to kick off Avenging Spider-Man and then to Savage Wolverine. 

It is good to know that his style is still as distinct and fresh since the 90’s, here’s hoping to more years of his work and hopefully another round of X-baseball, they don't play that anymore :(