The Complete Kabuki: 30th Anniversary Edition

by David W. Mack

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels

1312 pages, Hardcover

Published February 18, 2025

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. See this thread for more information.



David W. Mack is a comic book artist and writer, best known for his creation Kabuki and his work on the Marvel Comics titles Daredevil and Alias

The author of the Star Trek Novels is David Mack

Reviews

[OmniBen · Rating 3 out of 5]

(Zero spoiler review) 2.75/5
Featuring some of the most beautiful art you will ever see in a comic book, and in a format so god damn big and heavy you may reduce your lap to a pile of dust whilst reading it. And yet despite being potentially the finest example of a comic artist flexing his chops at every given opportunity, not to mention being able to write some, too. I can't describe Kabuki as anything other than frustrating and disappointing. The first 4-500 pages is something truly special and had me rather completely worked up into a literary lather, yet what follows for the remaining 7-800 pages was so meandering and aimless (not to mention unimaginably boring), I wanted to toss the book across the room in frustration (though it might have resulted in the entire left side of my house subsiding into the ground). One third neo noir thriller, two thirds an autistic teenage girls scrapbook with fumblingly monotonous attempts at profundity. I'll let you decide which third was the good one. Kabuki remains one of the best and worst things I've ever read. 2.75/5


OmniBen.

[Junipher Greene · Rating 1 out of 5]

Kabuki is the richest of styles and methods graphic epic made by single author. David Mack started this story being in college, and the artwork grows winding his mastership. And that's not only about the image — through these fifteen years the story goes DEEPER, and not FAR from the starting arc.

..I ordered this tome and was totally disappointed, because Dark Horse repeated the deadly sin of their Kabuki Library Editions — stretched the pages wide. Original page ratio — 0.65, it was saved in TBPs and Omnibus editions, but Library tomes are 0.75. Sometimes they remixed panels, but mostly just stretched the width. It ruined this beautiful castle: for example, origami sheets not only are square in the original Kabuki, but they MUST be square.

Every good review of Libraries started and ended on this point, but Dark Horse made Kabuki stretched again.

Resuming, Kabuki is the mustest read, but it has to be read in original aspect ratio.

[Miles · Rating 3 out of 5]

It started out really good. Then I think maybe the author ended the story too soon and had to create a new storyline. It becomes incredibly trippy and experimental. The art is really incredible and very surreal. Most of the entire series is this way. The ending is drawn by a new artist. While the story is still good, it tries very hard to cram itself into the lore even though it was obvious this newer storyline was never planned from the beginning.

[Mohammad]

DNF

[No_One · Rating 5 out of 5]

A transcendent, unforgettable work of art.