History & Style

Style

Alex Maleev believes that having only been introduced to mainstream comics in 1997 has kept his characters more realistic in nature, and less like a traditional superhero. Maleev likes to reference his Bulgarian origins in his artwork whenever he can. In Aliens vs. Predator, for example, the alien eggs are shown to be stored in the cellar of a Bulgarian church. Many of Maleev’s friends and family have modeled for him to use as character studies.

History

Alex Maleev started his comic book career in with Godan in 1991, and by Carthel of Dead the following year. This would lead to art duties on various Batman titles at DC Comics. Maleev then worked with James O’Barr on two Crow series, Dead Time and Flesh & Blood. The next few years Maleev was the fill-in artist on assorted titles or one-shot issues at DC and Acclaim. His next major project was Aliens vs. Predator: Eternal for Dark Horse.

Working With Bendis

Maleev was first partnered with Brian Michael Bendis on Todd McFarlane’s Sam and Twitch series. This would lead to an extended run for the duo at Marvel Comics on Daredevil. Maleev left Daredevil in 2006 with plans to collaborate with Bendis again on a Spider-Woman miniseries, initially intended as an ongoing series. The pair would go on to produce a four part miniseries Halo: Uprising, based on Microsoft’s popular videogame. The series suffered from delays through its run, but as a whole was successful. Maleev and Bendis garnered the spotlight again at Marvel with the one-shot Secret Invasion: Dark Reign, which was the ending and starting point for the event Secret Invasion and company wide banner Dark Reign respectively. In 2010 Maleev and Bendis started their creator-owned series Scarlet under Marvel’s Icon Comics imprint. Maleev has recently paired with Bendis, this time to produce an ongoing, and highly anticipated, series Moon Knight

Other Works

Maleev worked as a storyboard artist on the films Great Expectations, Hell’s Kitchen, Coming Soon, and The Bone Collector. He has received some attention for his artwork being showcased on the hit television series Heroes, his art being used to represent Sylar’s paintings. His artwork as also appeared prominently in White Wolf’s role-playing game rulebook The World of Darkness and Vampire: The Requiem.

Currently

At the moment Maleev is paired with Bendis, they are working together on a Daredevil mini-series called Daredevil: End of Days. This mini-series is about the last days of Matt Murdock when he was alive operating as Daredevil.