Re: DM favourite character ??
MON, 5/28/01, 4:24 a.m. - In Response To: DM favourite character ?? (Jeremy Bishop)

Hi Jeremy,

David who is your fav character that you have worked

or want to work on ??

Also what is your fav Kabuki comic book ??

Some favorites are also ones that I feel I was able to express very personal things, or grow more as a person while working on them.

Of the Scarab books, #3 still holds a warm spot as I feel It captures a lot of my own personal experiences in it.

Skin Deep #2 is another. Kabuki #2 with the Invisable Friends children's book. and especially Kabuki #4 has a lot of personal views in it. Also #9. But pretty much each and every one holds something for me for a different reason.

Kabuki Dreams of the Dead and the Color Special (in DREAMS) are the first painted books I ever did. And they deal a lot with the death of my mother. So those are important to me in their own ways too.

DD #15 also had a lot of my childhood in it and some memories of my father. Each is personal to me in it's own way. ANd each sort of documents a personal growth, evolution, or realization that occure while I worked on it.

Bendis and I had a fantastic time signing in Atlantis Fantasy World on Wednesday.

It was great to be back and meet my readers and to make new ones. THis year is Atlantis' 25th anniversary as a comic store. Each month of this year they have what they call a "Celebrity Signing" in the store. I was happy to hear the Bendis and I drew the most people and gave the store their best business day of these signings.
Yay us.

Everyone at the store is great. And the readers were so nice. Too bad I could only stay there one day. I love the bay area. Especially Santa Cruz. Flew there Wed and flew back Thursday. But had a great time. Thanks to Jamaica for the original Kabuki drawing. And to the other readers for their gifts and readership.

Hi Burdock,

I can tell from your above impersonation post that you would like me to respond to this post. THanks for your thoughts on it. So...

Subjective interpretations of another persons ideographic language upon the page. Its like puzzles, but most of the time, when we know the tools and the signs, the symbol-techniques we understand... but can we understand the actual art if we have never seen its like before...

You'll notice that in the KAbuki books, the first one started with a bit of the conventional structure, and issue by issue the reader is introduced to the grammar of my own personal graphic language as the story weeds out less and less of the conventional structure. Each issue equips the reader with more foundation of the book's language and at the same time pulls the reader further into the book's own unique realm and totally out of the conventional structure.

take for example the first issue of Bendis/Mack's Daredevil... To the uninitiated it is just scribbly mess...not even ever would they conceive of it as a puzzle or something to figure out...

they certainly wouldn't hang it on their walls...some of it is so unbeautiful... but anyway...

"Is Dave Going Mad"

'Mad' of course being a label placed on minority expression by the majority common and garden enforced taliban of existence. Like when your mother goes quiet and becomes friendly when you enter the room with a haddock for a tie...she feels pity/shock/horror instead of experiencing the comedic effect you had planned. We call her 'no fun'.

Daves rough sketch pages and plans for paintings used to appear at the back of the books so he could show you the thought processes that go into creating his art...but now its somehow become his 'style'

...little words with arrows pointing at empty spaces saying 'face' i.e. 'I will draw a face here when I get down to doing the finished work'... Anyway. His books are like galleries of modern art that need sitting/studying/interpretation...

but when the interpretative ideographology starts to become a Style..then am I wasting my time trying to interpret it?

i.e..this isn't a puzzle its merely an image made to look like one of Dave's puzzles, by Dave,

But you'll notice that I have never said "hey this is my style". I just don't think in those terms. The people who do label me are label me with a style, probably have a different relationship to my art and work than I do.

Though Kabuki neckties would be very stylish(and yes, I would buy one too), I don´t think that they correspond to the world of Kabuki. Too reflect the eighties-like community portrayed in Agents I would suggest ´Buki or Shu-Gei jeantags! Sew the tag right into your very own Gai jeans!! [:)]

Hello,

Thanks for reading my books. I hope you've been able to find and enjoy the recent Scarab series. Scarab #8 ships in July and will conclude that storyline.

Of course, I will continue to do Kabuki books. I designed Kabuki as a personal outlet. I've been doing them at a break neck pace for eight solid years. I've turned down countless offers to work on other (much more commercial and better paying) projects throughout that time.

I figured I would enjoy writng a DD story and then collaborating with my long time friend (Bendis) on another one before I started the next Kabuki story. Is that so wrong?

My work on DD has introduced a lot of new readers to the Kabuki volumes, and vice versa, which is not only great for comics in general, but will help me to continue to do my own Kabuki books for the next Kabuki series that I immerse myself into.

I'm glad you read the books and I hope that you will continue.

I just want to know if there is gonna be anymore Kabuki stuff or is Mack just too commercial for his 1st labor of love ? Don't get me wrong , I love his Daredevil stuff , anything that will bring him more recognition is great...but hell , I'd like to see a little more effort put toward the work that gained him his fan base is all. Am I the only person who feels this way ? Kabuki has been the most fun I've had back issue hunting in years but as much of the older stuff I've acquired , I'd like to see the new... Peace !

The violence and the loss is such a downer in your stories.
I wish you could hide these from us and just make more gentle everyday stories with wonderful beautiful characters creating wonderful beautiful things and getting off on each other and each others loves and lives.
Do you have any personal motivation for showing the violence? Do we need to know? Why can't they just talk about the bad times...play down all the retribution/killings and destruction of human life by human life. There's too much of this in the world...show them all how much better it can be..You have an audience...they can spread the message...lets get creating and talking and spreading the word...

Thanks for speaking up. I totally understand where you are coming from. I pretty much designed Kabuki as a direct outlet for my own life situations and I suppose the book changes drastically as it documents Kabuki's (and mine) growth in the different eras of her life. I was in a diffent place when I wrote the earlier stories. I was like 19 or 20 years old. And I suppose some of the violence in the book reflects my own stuggles in life. THough I can't stand to see it now. And i think Kabuki would feel the same way. Now, I am very much at the stage that Kabuki is in her interaction with Akemi. The inner decisions and peace, reflect in your outward environment. I've included below, my response to your earlier post which goes into this further. In case you missed it below. Let me know what you think.

I wish Kabuki was free from all the violence...just the stories in scarab and skin deep where they're in the flat, sketching each other and checking out each others comics...I like those bits best of all...

When I was doing these issues with Akemi and Kabuki I really felt like I was reaching a great change in the character that would mark the direction of future books. ANd I was getting a lot of mail from people who really were able to be inspired from these issues and have it help thier own life and outlook. I really appreciated that. I felt like the Kabuki issues were helping these many readers, in the same way that Akemi's notes were helping Kabuki to actualize her self and choose what kind of life and reality that she wanted, in order to transcend the one that she had found herself in.

It was very rewarding to be in the part of the story that was inspiring and uplifting so many people. In contrast, when I went back to read some of the earlier books (Circle of Blood, Masks of the Noh) I was quite disturbed by some of the early violent scenes. I realized that the Kabuki stories were reflecting my own inner growth. Without too much self analysis, perhaps those earlier tumutuous scenes in Circle of Blood were my way of dealing with situations in my life at that time in my life. Circle of blood reflects a certain need to bring out an internal order from an external chaos and stress. Parts of it are difficult for me to look at now. The violent parts especially. I'm just not in that place anymore. And I think that Kabuki would feel the same way.

In Metamorphosis (1-9) she makes an inner change. And her environment changed as well. She left that violence behind. She left that life behind to grow the person that Akemi helped her relize that she is. Hopefully in context, these books show that it is not where you came from, not what you start with, but where you decide to go, and what you decide to do with it.

Akemi showed Kabuki (as hopefully these books show thier readers) that every choice should be creative and constructive rather that destructive. THese books, from Circle of Blood to Metamorposis document Kabuki's transition from a product of her immediate environment to a self actualized adult. And I suppose they document my maturation in that very same way.

So while those early violent scenes disturbe me probably even more than they do you, I hope that in context of the entire story, they will point to the contrast involved in this self actualized process of positive evolution.

Both Bendis and I have been formally invited as guests to attend Florida Orlando's Megacon on Feb 22-24 of next year.

I am very happy about this. It's been a few years since I've been there and this will be Bendis' first time there.

Looking forward to seeing my Florida readers.

DM

Hi Mike,

Again, thanks for reading my book. And welcome to the message board. I really do appreciate that you look forward to Kabuki.

One of the best things about doing some non-Kabuki projects is that It really makes me look forward to getting back into the groove of a regular Kabuki series.

It is great to do a project that I do every aspect of, but after being immersed in it for a long time, I tend to think that it would be nice to do a collaboritive project (ala Scarab, and both DD stories), then after a collaboritive project I tend to look forward to the one man show project again.

As soon as I get into the groove on one way of working I tend to like to flex different muscles and try another approach and vice versa. I think I probably just need to work in this kind of cycle to keep everything fresh. Constant change.

Speaking of which, I do have the next three Kabuki storylines written. And it is very interesting to see how much Kabuki changes and how different some of the future stories will be compared to some of the earlier ones. Based on these upcoming stories, I think that all of these books collectively will really feel like sort of a biography of all the different eras in one person's life.

Warmest regards,

David

I relate. Especially with the losing of a loved one.

But I'm also a much different person now than I used to be a few years ago. The Seiko childhood story in Scarab #3 was in many ways my own. I experienced a lot of "impact" in my very early years.
Like Seiko, I experienced physical discipline as the first response to a situation and I suppose I started to react physically as my own first response to a situation.
I took it as a natural response. Physical confrontations were no big deal, and even in play, I didn't know when an activity was over until someone was bleeding.
It didn't matter if it was me or someone else. I didn't even realize that this was abnormal becaouse a lot of my friends played the same way. But it my early twenties it sort of dawns on you that you are not supposed to get in fights so much and have so many open wounds when You are trying to do business in a business setting.

I really really related to fightclub.

I learned to let it "slide". I started to have a lot more appreciation for everyone else's point of view and their right to see reality the way they need to.

I also started to see the world from a "we" point of view rather than an "I" or an "us" versus "them" perspective.