He attended Columbia University as an English major and developed an appreciation for the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs and William Faulkner.

[volume & issue needed] Arcudi worked on a number of comic books based on films, including RoboCop, Terminator, Predator, Alien, and The Thing.

Arcudi's series Barb Wire, featuring bounty hunter and bartendress Barbara Kopetski, was adapted into a film of the same name starring Pamela Anderson.

[volume & issue needed] For Dark Horse Comics, Arcudi worked on developing the second incarnation of the character The Mask first in Mayhem #1–4, and then in a series of books illustrated by Doug Mahnke.

Arcudi and later Mahnke teamed up for several projects following The Mask, including the DC Comics series Major Bummer, which focused on a group of ineffectual superheroes.