Battle Chasers and Darksiders

Joe Mad's design for War from Darksiders by Vigil Games

In the late '90s, Joe Madureira was one of the hottest comic artists on the planet. Seven years ago, he left the industry and moved to Austin to co-found Vigil Games, the creators of Darksiders. The man known as Joe Mad appears today at Wizard World Austin, but we chatted him earlier about how he made the transition from print to electronic publishing.

Mad was part of the first wave of American comic artists to be heavily influenced by Japanese anime. He was a regular series penciler on Marvel's top-selling Uncanny X-Men for four years, as well as runs on Excalibur and Ultimates. In 1998 he, and fellow creators J. Scott Campbell and Humberto Ramos founded Cliffhanger comics, through which Mad self-published his beloved (and still-unfinished) Battle Chasers epic. On the game side, he was creative director for apocalyptic actioneer Darksiders, and is now hard at work on Darksiders 2. His firm is also dabbling in big franchise territory with new MMO Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium Online, due in 2012.

Austin Chronicle: On the game design front, it used to be that the approach was "what will the processors let us get away with?" Now it's "what will the ESRB let us get away with?" From an artistic perspective, how have you found working on video games?

Joe Madureira: ESRB hasn't really affected us one way or another. When we started on Darksiders, we made a pact that rather than choose a rating we were shooting for and try to shoe-horn the design, we would do what was best for the game and the 'franchise' and let the rating be whatever it was. We got an 'M' rating, not surprising … but I don't think that's necessarily a huge deal these days. Some of the highest selling games in the last 5 years were slapped with an "M" rating. I think development time is the biggest hurdle in game development. You can pretty much pull off anything now – the question is, how many people is it going to take to execute, and how long? Because time is money. Obviously it takes quite a bit more planning and organization than I was used to working in comics.

AC: How different is the experience of working for a large publishing house like Marvel to working with a big game published like THQ, or is having Vigil games more like having the creator-owned outlet of Cliffhanger?

JM: Vigil is fully owned by THQ, so we are definitely working for a large publisher. That could be really bad, but I will say, from the very beginning, THQ has never tried to wrestle creative away from the studio. If anything they've been really supportive about directional changes or when we've asked for more time. Publishers really only become a hassle if they hate what you are doing, so – in that respect, I think we've been incredibly lucky.

AC: Image has the Battle Chasers hardcover scheduled for Nov 10 (just in time for the Austin event): Are we likely to see the return of Garrison and Gully?

JM: I'm totally excited about the release of the Hardcover. Over the years I'd always hear from fans that had trouble locating some of the issues. This is the first time it's all been collected into one volume. We'll see what kind of reception it gets. I'd love to do something with the characters again someday, but it's a long way off. I have creative-ADD, too much stuff lined up before then!

Joe Madureira appears at the Wizard World Austin Comic Con at 2pm, Sat. Nov. 13, at the Austin Convention Center (500 E. Cesar Chavez). One-day tickets cost $30; three-day passes are $50. For more info, see www.wizardworld.com.