Alternative comics Madden began his career self-publishing
minicomics in
Ann Arbor,
Michigan, in the early 1990s. He was co-editor with
Matt Feazell and
Sean Bieri of the anthology ''5 O'Clock Shadow''. After several of his short pieces appeared in established publications, Madden's first graphic novel,
Black Candy, was published by
Black Eye Books in 1998. His graphic novel
Odds Off was published by
Highwater Books (2001), and two issues of his periodical series of short works,
A Fine Mess, were published by
Alternative Comics (2002–2004). Madden's work from the early 2000s often dealt with themes in settings in
Mexico (where he lived for a time in the late 1990s), or that were rooted in Mexican culture. For a time, he was a consulting editor for the minicomic
Le Sketch, published out of Portugal. During this period, Madden also worked as an editorial illustrator.
Comics formalism In 2002, Madden was named the "U.S. correspondent" of
OuBaPo, a French comics movement which believes in the use of formal constraints to push the boundaries of the medium. Madden's
99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style, published in 2005, is an inventive comics homage to
Raymond Queneau's 1947 book
Exercises in Style.
99 Ways to Tell a Story retells a single, mundane one-page anecdote in 99 radically different visual and narrative variations. Both playful and analytical, the book serves as a living demonstration of the formal possibilities of comics — exploring how changes in style, structure, and design transform meaning while foregrounding the very language of the medium. Madden's
Ex Libris, published in 2021, is a playful, metafictional
locked-room mystery in which a nameless narrator searches an endless, imaginary library for clues to his predicament. Mixing genres and visual styles — from superhero parody to indie romance to
EC Comics horror — the book is both a puzzle and a celebration of comics themselves. Other works expressing Madden's interests as a
comics theorist/formalist include
Bridge (2013/2016/2021) and
Drawn Onward (2015).
Six Treasures of the Spiral: Comics Formed Under Pressure, a collection of Madden's experiments in comics formalism, was released in 2024 by
Uncivilized Books. Stories take the form of a visual palindrome, align their structures with the letters of the alphabet, or adhere to strict poetic formats such as the
villanelle and
haiku.
Mainstream comics colorist From 2001 to 2006, Madden worked as a comics
colorist for
DC and
Marvel Comics, coloring such titles and series as
Bizarro Comics,
Bizarro World,
Captain America: Dead Men Running,
Soldier X, and
The Thing: Night Falls on Yancy Street. Criticism/education/translation In the mid-1990s, Madden began writing reviews for
The Comics Journal and other publications. In the early 2000s, he taught comics storytelling at the
School of Visual Arts. With his wife, fellow cartoonist
Jessica Abel, Madden published two comics textbooks —
Drawing Words and Writing Pictures, (
First Second Books, 2008), and
Mastering Comics: Drawing Words & Writing Pictures Continued (First Second, 2012). Madden has translated a number of French
bande dessinées for the English-language market, including works by
Aristophane,
Edmond Baudoin, and
Blutch. ==Personal life==