Joe Madureira has announced he's leaving Vigil Games, the Austin, Texas-based studio he co-founded in 2005, "to move on to new adventures" -- among them, comics. And at the top of the list is Marvel.

"I'll be talking more about 'The Next Big Thing' in the coming months, but in the short term, I'm focusing on banging out a bunch of comics," he wrote Monday on his Facebook page. "Which should hopefully sate your hunger, you bloodthirsty savages!"

Making a splash in 1994 with his run on Marvel's Uncanny X-Men, Madureira garnered a devoted fan following with his much-delayed, and never-finished, WildStorm/Cliffhanger series Battle Chasers before making the jump to video games as a character designer and, eventually, creative director for THQ, where he helped to develop Darksiders. He returned to comics in 2008 with Marvel's The Ultimates 3, with writer Jeph Loeb, and then teamed with writer Zeb Wells late last year for the first three issues of Avenging Spider-Man. Marvel Editor-in-Chief promised in March that Wells and Madureira would reunited for a planned Spider-Man/Wolverine/Elektra story, telling Comic Book Resources "it has changed shape and is becoming a slightly bigger project" (he even teased a page of art from the "secret" project).

"Yes, the Marvel stuff is still happening," Madureira wrote last night. "As I mentioned, this will be my focus for a bit as Marvel has been extraordinarily patient with me as pages slowly trickled in while I was also Vigil's Creative Director. Before I do ANYthing else I need to get some books done!"

However, those fans hoping that Madureira's renewed focus on comics will mean the return of Battle Chasers are likely to be disappointed, at least for now.

"You diehard Battle Chasers fans are hilarious," he wrote. "No matter where I go or what I'm talking about, BC is always on people's minds. I LOVE YOU! In all honesty, it probably won't happen immediately, but I would absolutely love to relaunch this book at some point down the road. I can't commit to it though until I'm positive I could swing it. I can only imagine the terrible fate that would await me if I stopped doing the book a second time. So won't do it until I can do it right. And there are a couple projects between now and then. If anything changes, you will be the first to know!!"