Kabuki: Circle of Blood

(Caliber, 1995)
™ and ©1995 David Mack

(From The Slings and Arrows Comic Guide)

After introducing the character in Kabuki: Fear the Reaper, writer/artist David Mack settles down to the extremely serious business of recording her origin and the epic fight with her father, the old general’s Yakuza son, in Circle of Blood.”The innumerable repetitions in the story, which begins with an origin tale (better dealt with in eight pages rather than a whole issue) are no doubt intended to give it an epic feel, but are merely tedious. Mack has a lot of storytelling quirks that make the story’s pacing jerky, and a number of drawing quirks which also stand in the way of your enjoyment.

The strangest is his habit of putting lingerie catalogue–style shots of the various agents posing with their weapons where you’d expect to see them slicing and dicing, while they describe what they’ve done to the various villains. There are far too many stiff splash pages and “symbolic” full–page layouts with 1970s–style floating heads and images melting into each other. It’s like looking at Paul Gulacy, circa Sabre, being advised by Steranko on particularly “trippy” pages. Although well–researched, the drama in Kabuki has too many moments of bathos to be affecting, and the violence is too controlled to be disturbing.—FJ

Jump to issue: