Visions
TUE, 5/18/04, 3:58 a.m. - In Response To: Question (J. A. Ferreira Cacella)

Saturday, I went to see if my local comic shop had recieved "Visions" or is it "Visions of the Night" by D. Mack. It hasn't arrived and it isn't even stocked (where the comic shop orders from). Is there any other way of getting this?

Thanks,

-arthur

Kindest regards,
David Mack

whats this: JUN04 2508 DF KABUKI ALCHEMY ALT CVR #1 $6.99
JUN04 2509 DF KABUKI ALCHEMY ALT FOIL CVR #1 $10.00

do you have any pics for us?
I try not to order DF stuff because of hte horrible horrible customer service but I might have to get this.....

DF bought a portion of the print run in advance to make a limited run of the book with out any type on the cover, so it is just my art.
They may be signed too, I don't know if that is how they are offered or if we went over that yet.

I think they are doing the same with the new Powers #1 from Icon.

I'll keep you updated as I learn more, and I'll post the final image as soon as I see it.

Thanks

It looks like I will be going there after all...

does ahn read that mail, cause i still haven't recieved a responce about those masks, and the picture i payed for.

fr0w

Sorry for the delay. She just returned from Australia.
I'm sure she'll get it out asap now.

Thanks,
DM

Hi David Thornton,
Good to see you here again!
I think it may have been a while since I saw you post.

Thanks for the advance info!
As always

Best,
DM

Just wanted to say it was great meeting and chatting with you at the Motor City Con on Friday. Thanks for hooking me up with the Kabuki stuff. I've already read Masks of the Noh and Skin Deep and enjoyed them both, especially Skin Deep. I think that's been my favorite so far. Looking forward to the rest.

Matt

Though I intend to make the new series (The Alchemy) my favorite now

I think it can be ordered thru the Previews and your retailer.
Please express to your retailer the importance of ordering the new Kabuki series.
Now that it is available thru the Marvel Previews they may feel comfortable ordering much more than the usual amount.

Thanks Jen!
DM

Is this (the foil cover) something that can only be ordered from Previews through your retailer? If so, I'm in deep trouble, because my retailer knows and cares very little about Kabuki.

Last time I stopped in, he had ONE issue of Kabuki and it was hidden underneath a stack of Shi (which is a good comic, but COME ON).

Thanks!
Please tell your sister I say hello!
Best,
David

I recently (finally) decided that my little sister was mature enough to handle reading the Kabuki series.. She's been begging me for a long time, so I knew she was going to be a fan from the start.

Anyway, she's almost finished reading Metamorphosis (my FAVOURITE in the series -- so far), and she just discovered the truth about the body you see at the beginning of Skin Deep and screamed out, "AHHHH!!! I HATE YOU, DAVID MACK!!!!!" and then added, "but i looooooove you" in a really tiny voice afterward.

Yup. Another one sucked in.

PS: She just finished Meta and turned to me to ask, "The book after this is Scarab, isn't it?" I replied, "Yup. And Kabuki's new story doesn't come out until July."

She shook her fist to the sky and asked, "Why, why do you love to torture me?"

Howzet,

With the T-shirt only days away from Australia I have a very limited amount of time for a reply.

I have arranged for the local newspaper to do a story on the shirt tour and a one week display at the local library. However, displaying the shirt on its own wont be enough.

What I would like is your permission, David, to display some photocopies of you Kabuki work and a quick description of the series along side the shirts display during the week.

May I have your permission?

-A.C.

I'll include this interview from Comic Shop news in case you want to include it in the description.

Here is the interview:
We'd like to do a cover story on the new Kabuki series, if you have time for some questions!

(1) This is being promoted as a new start for Kabuki; can you offer some details on that aspect of the series? DM: The new KABUKI series, KABUKI- The Alchemy, is a brand new era in Kabuki's life. It is a great place for new readers to start because it is a brand new start for Kabuki that is very much it's own story, not dependant on previous stories. You don't need to read the past to understand the primary thrust of the new story. But if you do, you will love the contrast and the oblique and subtle hints at her past. And you will see the fruition of many of the seeds planted in previous issues! Seeds that you didn't know were seeds, but now you will see them blossom into something spectacular and mind-blowing.

This era in Kabuki’s life is its own story and it is not going to recap anything from the previous stories. I've made sure that all six Kabuki volumes are in print and available in paperback and hardcover collections. So I hope readers will use this as an opportunity to read the early Kabuki collections that have come before in preparation for this new series. But if they do not, they will still be able to begin with this story. Those previous stories are Kabuki's past. There won't be any flashbacks to it. No catch up.

For readers that have read all of the Kabuki volumes so far, after you read this new series, you will want to go back and read the previous stories again and you will see them in a new way that is going to make you appreciate them in a brand new dimension as well as the ways that they are already charming to you. They will still hold that charm, but you will have a brand new perspective to appreciate them from. It will be like looking at pictures of yourself as a child. You always appreciated the pictures for what they were, but now that you are grown up, you can see how those moments shaped your present life.

The new series is specifically designed to be Kabuki’s new life. And it is essentially an instruction manual on creating a NEW life, creating the life of YOUR OWN PERSONAL DREAMS AND INTERESTS, that should be practical and applicable to anyone who reads it. It is a recipe and blueprint for creating your own reality, your own career, and your own fresh start. It is a spell for creating your own magic. Taking the baggage of your life and turning it into something positive and useful. Turning your garbage into gold.

(2) How did Kabuki begin? How much of the Kabuki canon had you envisioned from the beginning, and how much of it developed as the story went along?

My work on Kabuki Began in January of 1993 when I was twenty years old. I would begin publishing Kabuki in 1994. Having decided the medium I would work with, and having worked in the business for a couple years to learn the craft, I decided that I wanted to create a comic book in which I could incorporate all of my personal philosophies, my passion for learning, and integrate my everyday personal experiences. I loved autobiographical comics, but I was not yet comfortable with that idea. I wanted to tell personal truths but at a distance. Through the unselfconscious comfort of a veil. But I did not want to fall into the trap of making the main character an idealized version of myself. So I decided that I would make all of the surface details very opposite, and that way the universal truths could shine through, and I could tell the story through metaphor. This way, instead of reading the story and seeing me, readers could find their own personal relation to the story and see themselves.

So I made the main character the opposite gender. I set the story in a different part of the world, with a different language, different history, and different culture. I was in university at the time, and I was taking the Japanese language, and learning Japanese history and mythology in my classes and in my own travels. So I used that as a framework for the story. The structure of the story is the traditional structure and metaphors of the traditional Japanese Ghost Story that is the subject of many of the Japanese Kabuki plays.

Much of the first Kabuki story is me as a 21-22 year old dealing with the death of my mother, just as Kabuki is coming to terms with the relationship and death of her mother in the story.

I knew the structure that the story would follow. So I had a skeletal outline of some of the major points very early on. And through the process of working on it, the rest came alive for me. When I was working on KABUKI Circle of Blood, I knew the main structure of most of the other books up through Metamorphosis. But the real life of the story occurred in the process. And when I was doing KABUKI Metamorphosis, most of the high points for KABUKI- The Alchemy occurred to me and I made notes for it then and also outlined my ideas for the next few Kabuki stories.

(3) For some of the Kabuki-related books, you worked with Rick Mays and other artists, didn't you? What made you decide to come back to doing full art for this project? And for that matter, how do you decide which books you write and which you write & illustrate?

KABUKI- Masks of the Noh (volume 3 of the Kabuki collections) is the first time I collaborated with other artists. The idea behind this story is that the Noh is searching for Kabuki. And though Kabuki is the central character to this story, and holds the story together, she is mostly absent, and it is the fleshing out of these secondary characters that becomes the humanity of the story. So in introducing each of these characters, I write them each with a different tone and voice. But I also wanted each one to have their own distinctive visual personality that contrasts from the other. So that idea was that each of the characters would be drawn by a different artist. That way, each time they appear in the story, the reader immediately sees their own unique perspective. It was a bold experiment and a logistical nightmare, but in retrospect, it worked out very nicely. Each time Kabuki appears, she is drawn by me. Rick Mays draws Scarab and Tigerlily every time they appear, Dave Johnson and Mike Oeming drew Ice, Andrew Robinson drew Snapdragon, and so on.

Then for the next two Kabuki volumes, Skin Deep (vol 4) and Metamorphosis (vol 5), I drew everything as Kabuki was the central character. Then in Scarab (vol 6) Rick Mays reprised his role as artist of Scarab to keep with continuity of that character’s visual personality. It is a story that chronicles her life from childhood to adult like Circle of Blood does with Kabuki.

Eventually I will do a series for each of the Noh characters. And for their stories, I intend to write them and work with an artist. And for all of the Kabuki stories I will be doing all of the artwork myself. And these will continue to alternate. I draw KABUKI- The Alchemy, then the next series will be a biography of Tigerlily with Rick Mays doing the art. That will give me plenty of time to gear up for the next Kabuki story that I paint myself, and so on.

(4) For readers who aren't familiar with Kabuki, could you offer a rundown on the series and the concept?

It is a mix of Japanese historical mythology, political intrigue, corporate espionage, and familial duty wrapped up in the retelling of the Japanese Ghost story. It is also a retelling of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. In that each of the characters in Kabuki corresponds to iconographic characters in that book and to pieces on the chessboard. Both stories are about the pawn’s journey to queen, or a child’s journey to an adult or evolved consciousness. Just as that book was a social commentary in the guise of a children’s book, Kabuki has it’s own themes that operate on several levels. Some are only apparent in repeat readings.

The story evolves as the character does in each of the succeeding volumes. KABUKI- Metamorphosis is described as this: “In an institution for renegade government agents, a horribly scarred woman faces a psychological showdown with her interrogating analyst, meets the other “defective” inmates, discovers the nature of identity, quantum physics, time, and the meaning of life. But can she escape her captors before her former comrades track her down to silence her?”

(5) Is all the earlier Kabuki material available in trade paperback now, or are there still some stories uncollected?

(6) Speaking of the trades--am I correct in remembering that you reworked and expanded some of the material when it was collected in trade paperback?

(7) This is a fully painted series, right? How much of a time commitment does that demand from you? How long has the book been in production, and how far along are you in the series currently?

(8) Erik Larsen has said that he prefers to focus most of his efforts on his creation, Savage Dragon. You've alternated, in a way, doing some Kabuki material, then taking a break and doing other stuff, including Daredevil; do you prefer working this way rather than dealing with the same character month in and month out? Is it a creative decision, a financial one, or both?

I have done three Daredevil arcs and the covers to the entire run of Alias. But I had already done seven years of straight Kabuki at a pretty break neck bimonthly pace before I worked on DD. After doing Kabuki straight for seven years, it was a fun switch to work in a collaborative effort with creators that I respect on a character that I read when I was a kid.

It was a creative decision. I make a comfortable living from doing just Kabuki. This is because the Kabuki collections continue to sell more and more each year. Kabuki Circle of Blood sells more now than it did when it came out ten years ago. Same for all the other collections. The Kabuki books have a Sandman type life as paperbacks and hardcovers in that new readers continue to buy them year after year. And after a new reader buys one Kabuki collection, they go back and buy all of the rest of them.

So I felt like it was the right time for me to stretch my creative muscles in a different way. And this did pay off in Kabuki readership as well, because readers of my DD stories began buying all of the Kabuki collections in large amounts and have stuck with the books as new Kabuki readers. Each Kabuki collection has went through several printings and continues to stay in print.

And I continued to have published Kabuki for most of the time that I worked on DD. The first DD story I wrote, I did it between issue #7 and #8 of Kabuki Metamorphosis. Then I painted the Wake Up story with Bendis while I was publishing Kabuki Scarab. Then I did the Alias covers and the Echo story after Scarab. That was all a lot of fun and a great shift in creative muscles, but now it is a joy to be back to my own creative focus with KABUKI- The Alchemy.

(9) By promoting this as a "jumping on point" for new readers, Image has conveyed to some the impression that Kabuki will be appearing more regularly from here on. Is that the case?

(10) You've maintained pretty tight control over Kabuki thus far; have you considered inviting other creators, like Brian Bendis, to play with your toys--that is, letting others write and draw stories set in the Kabukiverse?

(11) There was a rumor recently that a Kabuki-Daredevil crossover project might happen at some point in the future... pipe dream or real possibility?

(12) Where do you go after The Alchemy is done?

And I’m collaborating with Brian Bendis in writing Ultimate X-men. But this new chapter of Kabuki will be my main focus for the foreseeable future. I make a conscious effort to improve with every issue and to break new ground and evolve as a writer with each Kabuki story as the character is evolving. The Alchemy does this in spades and operates on several levels.

...an alternative (or third) cover to Alchemy#1 (as opposed to the original and the Maleev variant)?

Or just a virgin cover of your Alchemy#1?

Not a new image, but a vigine virsion of my Alchemy cover.