“Great Expectations”

By Scott Braden

    “The X-Men aren’t that challenging to me anymore,” Uncanny X-Men artist Joe Madureira confesses from his New York City home. Having just finished work on Uncanny #350--the double-sized issue that will be his last--Madureira is reflecting on his successful run on the title, as well as what may lie ahead for him in the future.  Here’s a hint. It probably won’t involve mutants.
“I have to work on something new,” Madureira warns. “If I do another comic that ends up being a team of X-Men rejects, then forget it. I just couldn’t do that...and I won’t.”
   

    Madureira, 22, has had a career in comics that most fans--as well as industry professionals--could only dream of. Having penciled titles for companies such as Image and Marvel Comics, Madureira’s manga-influenced style quickly earned him a place on Uncanny, the foundation of the X-books and one of the hottest-selling comics currently published. And his penciling gig on that book, in turn, gave him fame, money, and countless opportunities as far as future work. “Uncanny was definitely
good to me,” Madureira says. “I’ve had a pretty good run on It, and I actually imagined myself staying on the book a lot longer. But it’s hard working on an X-book when you’re thinking about other projects while you’re doing it. So leaving Uncanny right now was the best thing for me artistically. I just felt like I needed a change of pace. I also felt that constantly working on a tight deadline and always working on the same characters would make me stagnant as a creator. I want to stay in comics for a long, long time, and my interest will die if continue to do the same old thing.”
   

    Does this mean that he’ll never come back to the X-Men again? “Who knows,” replies Madureira. “I may want to draw Uncanny again in the future, though I don’t know how Marvel would feel about that. But for right now, I’ve got to do something else. I’m burned out on the X-Men!” So where does that leave Madureira? Besides working on a proposed Spider-Man project (his original plan to pencil Spider-Man itself didn’t work out) and wanting to draw the X-Men/JLA crossover with writer Grant
Morrison, Madureira has decided to risk it all by readying a
creator-owned series of his own. And he’s loving every minute of it. “I want to have control over what I’m doing,” Madureira says, “and I really want to create new characters and concepts that are mine. So for me, doing my own book only makes sense.”
   

    But what about the fame and the money? Madureira is quick to admit, “I know that I wouldn’t be taking such a risk if I were leaving a lesser-selling book. I also know that whatever I do next will not hit Uncanny’s sales. That’s impossible. The X-Men have been around forever and everyone buys that book. And since Uncanny and the X-Men were what put me in the spotlight in the first place, it may mean that I won’t be in the spotlight anymore, since I’ll no longer be drawing those characters. That’s nerve-racking, but it’s also a risk that I’m willing to take.”
   

    It appears that others want in on his project as well. According to Madureira, companies such as Marvel, Wildstorm Productions, and Awesome Entertainment are currently looking to bring his new project to their publishing houses. And with his exclusive contract with Marvel running out this month, even more companies are expected to ‘feel him out’ for what may be the hot book of ‘98. So what is the elusive dream project of
Madureira’s?
   

    It’s everything that fans look for in great comics...and more.
“What I’m creating is very cinematic,” Madureira proclaims. “it’ll
almost be like you’re watching Japanese animation on paper.
“The working title for the project is Battle Chasers. The book revolves around four characters--but it’s not a team book. There’s no team structure at all. It just so happens that these four characters hang out together. None of them suddenly say, ‘Let’s go save the world! You! Go get ‘em!’
   

    “With Battle Chasers,” continues Madureira, “I want to avoid making my fit into the ‘typical’ superhero team scenario. There’s no big, hulking character in the background. There’s no short, Wolverine-type guy who rips up stuff and acts really violent. I didn’t want to create a book like that.”
   

    What Madureira has created is a story that’s not set in our time or on our Earth. Possibly writing the book himself (he hasn’t decided yet), Madureira’s taking the best elements of both pure fantasy and cutting-edge science fiction and creating something unlike any American comic currently produced.
   

    “The first character in the book is this nine-year-old girl who’s the ‘Hulk’ character on the team,” Madureira explains. “So as you look at her and think that she’s just this cute little kid, she picks up a tree and smacks you with it. She’s very deceptive. And she hangs out with a magically-created robot that functions on both mechanics and magic. “Then I have this senile, old guy who carries a huge stone book on his back that is almost the same size that he is. Even though he looks like some goofy old guy, he’s in all actuality a very, very powerful being.” Madureira pauses, then adds, “The last character that I’ve created for Battle Chasers is this bounty hunter who’s also an expert swordsman. He’s widely-feared by everyone, but because of a promise he makes early on in the series, he can’t use his sword at all. So we’ll see how he deals with that, especially since he’s pretty devastating with a weapon!”
   

    Putting these characters into place so early in the project, Madureira has spent what free time he’s had making that they work together the way he want’s them to. Needless to say, he’s not disappointed, explaining, “It’s weird. You’ve got what sounds like a strange combination of characters, but when you see them in action on the page, they just have this incredible chemistry! I’ve been trying to see who I could get rid of, and what other kind of characters I could bring in, but the ones I’ve already set up just seem inseparable to me right now. “I like the concept of Dungeons & Dragons and big robots,” Madureira finally adds. “And with Battle Chasers, I want to create a ‘technology versus magic’ type of thing. As you can tell, I’m going crazy with this book. It’s just so totally different. And by the time it’s finished, it
will either have killed my entire career or proven to the world that I’ve done something pretty cool. Either way, I’m having a blast with it!”

    -Reprinted from RIOT MAGAZINE #1.  Special thanks to Sp1deyB0Y for typing this article out for us!   Thanks, Casey!