David Mack's "Kabuki" is about a female assassin and agent of a shadow organization known as the Noh.
She gets her name from the traditional Japanese "Kabuki" mask she wears while carrying out her assignments.
Throughout Kabuki's story, she struggles with identity and the unreliability of her memories as her entire life has essentially been taken away and reconstructed to suit the goals of the shadow organization she works for.
The story is told primarily through flashback, which proves questionable as we are shown the same event from varying perspectives and led to wonder whether or not what we're seeing is really happening or merely Kabuki's skewed perspective of reality.
Mack employs many varied graphic forms in the composition of each page-painting, sketches, collage, traditional pencil work, newspaper clippings, even crayons-all of which come together beautifully to composite each page, each standing out as a work of art.
In his writing, he combines philosophy and haiku and many other forms of writing to develop a very potent and beautiful expression of Japanese culture as well as the culture of humanity, all disguised as a graphic novel.
What Mack accomplishes with "Kabuki" is not something so much to be read, but experienced.
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