REVIEW: Kabuki: Circle of Blood #4

Writer/Artist/Creator: David Mack
Review: Will Dubbeld

Kabuki was always a bit of a mystery to me. I'd known about it for years but had seen nought aside from ethereal, watercolor advertising. Mack's work was familiar to me, having seen his splendid art in Daredevil, but his creator-owned Kabuki was a mystery. There was almost a Dave McKean-like quality to the book's art and that prompted me to seek out Kabuki.

NOT a common book in my neck of the woods, however. As fortune had it, I did manage to luck into 3 random issues in the good ol' dollar box at the LCS.

Expecting a collage of form and color, I instead discovered the first Kabuki series was a traditionally rendered black & white indie book. Not what I expected, but by no means disappointing. The pencils and inks are sharp in these pages, offering a crisp and detailed story with some good uses of negative space.  Mack offers some extremely clever nuances of symbolism and you certainly can see touches of where his future art was headed.        

The story had me at a bit of a loss. The quality of writing was not at fault; rather I had the disadvantage of reading the fourth part of a six issue story without any supporting context. It was easy enough to glean some story elements, but for the most part, I had no idea how we got there.
Kabuki is part of a clandestine organization called Noh, but without prior knowledge or exposition, I've no idea their agenda. They are involved, to some degree, with the Japanese government, and I caught a bit of a Court of Owls vibe off the presentation but no solid answers.  Kabuki has a personal vendetta against a rogue Noh member named Kai who appears to be an archetypal Yakuza villain, but again, I've no frame of reference for the conflict between the two characters.
(I ended up Googling quite a bit about Kabuki ex post facto and uncovered the answers I was looking for, but no spoilers here, folks)

I'm eager to find the rest of the series and the further tales of Kabuki, because this issue resonated with me.  Although the storytelling was a bit untested, presumably due to David Mack's inexperience, I enjoyed the hell outta this book. On a baseline level it harkened back to contemporary Indie comics like The Crow and Razor with the stark, black & white grittiness and the concept of a lone hero fueled by vengeance. It's thematically more enjoyable than Razor and not quite on par with The Crow, but having read an issue of Kabuki: Alchemy I discovered David Mack surpassed O'Barr's magnum opus.

I'm late to the party here, but one lonely dollar box discovery has birthed a new fan of David Mack's Kabuki.