It's Beautiful. I Don't Know What Else To Say.

I've recently finished reading the first Kabuki trade collection written and illustrated by David Mack, Circle of Blood. The title character is an assassin in modern Japan. Kabuki has not had a typical nor a happy childhood, but her journey of self-discovery, as told in this six-issue arc, is both compelling and breathtakingly illustrated.

Kabuki is one of those books I've often heard people comment on favorably, but never tried before. Finding a decently priced copy of this initial trade for sale online helped convince me to correct that oversight.

And I'm not quite sure what else to say about the book.

A few dozen pages into the story, I didn't think I was going to like Kabuki overall. I hadn't planned to trash the book or anything; as I've said before, I do not believe a book can't have merit just because it isn't my favorite. Too many people like Kabuki for my lone opinion to make this or any other a "bad" book.

But as I continued reading, I found myself liking the tale more and more. Just not in ways I'm finding it easy to put into words.

I'm not a big fan of stories revolving heavily around the Japanese society, martial arts, the Yakuza and such. That's likely at least part of the reason why I've never picked up a copy of Kabuki before this. No special dislike for the culture or people, either, mind you, but no special fascination or interest for it. But this is truly a universal tale which could be told using another culture as a backdrop very easily.

Mack's art and writing in this book are, as I said, simply wonderful and somewhat ground-breaking, too. This book doesn't look like a conventional comic in either its layout or design. Mack uses the words and art together so that text becomes part of the art and the art truly helps advance the story in ways beyond how sequential art is typically utilized.

There are issues with readability that stem from that, however. The lack of a traditional panel layout means it can be hard to know where your eye should go next on some pages, but these instances are very few in this book. More prevalent are a few legibility issues which may not have been present in the original issues of this book. For instance, white text is often printed on black backgrounds, but the muddy effect this can cause makes the text hard to read in a few spots. Also, there are some pages where the text is so far to one side of the page that the large size of this collected volume makes it hard to see all of the text close to the spine.

So I ended up liking Kabuki's story in Circle of Blood. I did. Some stories, a reader likes so much, he or she wants to know what happens to the characters next, even if more tales utilizing those characters were never written. But this arc reads quite well as a done-in-one. I know Kabuki's tale continues, but I am content to simply stop with the last page of this volume and not read more of her journey. At least at this point. Maybe someday, I'll change my mind.
Does that mean the story is bad or failed to engage me? I don't think so; I liked it too much to believe that. But it didn't engage me to the point that I want to buy the second or third collections right now. That doesn't usually happen.