Lecture and art gallery reception Oct 22...NEWS..
THU, 10/16/03, 3:15 a.m.

Here is an update on my new gallery show at the NKU main gallery. I will be giving a lecture, speaking, Q&A at NKU on Octover 22. It will be at 8pm held in Greaves Concert Hall in the first floor of the NKU art building. This is the same concert hall at NKU the Neil Gaiman spoke at last year. So if you went to that you know where it is and how fun this will be.

I will keep this a very interactive forum. Please feel free to express yourself and ask the questions about the details that you want to speak about. The lecture will also be filmed and included with the gallery receptions, and other workshops I’ve done this month on a DVD that the school is making for educational purposes.

Before the lecture there will be a reception and cocktail party in the actual gallery where my work is on display. This will be from 6:30 to 8. There will be food and drinks (including wine and alcohol if you indulge). The entire Cincinnati Art Directors Club is hosting the reception and will be in attendance. The gallery is on the 3rd floor of the art building. At 8 we will go to the concert hall on the 1st floor.

The art critic from the Cincinnati Enquirer has hailed the show as on of the five must see fall shows of this year. The Cincinnati Enquirer that ships on the 21st will have a detailed profile of the show and my work and makes reference to the Kabuki message board and some of the posters here.

Read on to hear the details of the show that I posted in the previous updates:

I have close to 400 original art pieces in the show. It is a one man show and has the ENTIRE main gallery of the university that I graduated from. My biggest show ever.

Included are: The original art from the entire issues of Daredevil #51-53. 33 original art pages from the Daredevil Wakeup story I did with Brian Michael Bendis. Hundreds of Kabuki pages from Metamorphosis, Skin Deep and Dreams (including the entire Ghost play art, and entire Kabuki One Half art).

Four figure sculptures at real life scale. Large full figure paintings at real life scale and larger. Many, many personal figure drawings, sketches, studies and doodles. A brand new never before published black and white autobiographical 8 page story called “Self Portrait”.

The original cover art to selected published covers of Kabuki, Daredevil, Alias and more. The Tori Amos painting I did for her upcoming calendar.

Handmade artbooks including “My Invisible Friend” (as seen in pages of Kabuki), Father Hymn Book, Mother Her Book. Child hood robot sculpture and first childhood oil painting and more.

Also included are many books and books will be available for sale to the public at the night of the opening reception.

Also free posters and post cards with the show art are free to public at the night of opening reception.

Reception will have free food and drinks. Including SUSHI! Yum. I hope I have time to eat some.

Previous update below will have other info dates, times and lecture night info:

I have a new gallery exhibit of my artwork in October. It will be held in the art gallery of the University that I graduated from and will extensively feature original pages from Kabuki, Daredevil, Echo, and many non-comic related works and paintings.

The opening night reception of the gallery will be Thursday October 2 from 5-8 pm. It will be held at the main gallery of the Art Building at Northern Kentucky University. Right across the river from Cincinnati Ohio.

It is a one man show and my work will be up throughout October but I hope people can make it on the opening night, as there will also be a signing held, a free poster for the gallery show, and books available. On Friday October 22 I will be having a lecture/discussion at the University. Last year NKU had Neil Gaiman do this at the University, and If you attended that you know how fun and interactive this can be.

The last two years the NKU Literature dept hosted something like this. I did it the first year, and Neil Gaiman did it the second year. This October the art dept is sponsoring my show and working hand in hand with other departments of the University including the Literature dept, and book stores in the area. Both events are free to the public, and everyone is welcomed to attend!

Thanks for sharing the link to download the lecture. I downloaded it the other day (God bless cable  )and burned it on CD. Finally watched it today, the lecture was very cool to watch and listen to. I like the intergration of your artwork into in film. However the download transfer isn't the greatest. There is a continuous buzz throughout the lecture. And halfway in there is a echo in your voice. Was that put in to help promote your DD run

Thanks for Sharing David,

Bryan Goff

I was just e-mailed this and thought you may be interested.

Writing Professor Andrew Miller gave a lecture and writing workshop at NKU on Oct 11 2003. He has also covered Kabuki in his literature and creative writing classes. And he was the first to orchestrate having Neil Gaiman and myself speak at the University. Here is a transcript of his recent lecture on the writing in Kabuki at that workshop.

David Mack: The Writer

I first heard of David Mack when the employees at Comic Book World in Cincinnati learned I was teaching at NKU. “Oh, have you met David Mack? He does comic books.” In fact, David's time here at NKU overlapped with mine, but at the time I was an adjunct instructor, teaching mostly composition and not creative writing.

I was first introduced to Kabuki and David as both writer and artist by one of my students. I was teaching a topics course for the Department of Literature and Language on Cincinnati authors. Someone suggested I take a look at David's collection of his first story arc, Circle of Blood. I did and decided to use the book in the class. David agreed to come and talk to the students and if I remember right, found it a bit surreal to come into a class and see a stack of papers written on his book at the university he had so recently attended. He talked about his work and answered questions from the class. He also confirmed my personal theory: all writers have a cat.

A few years ago, when I proposed the Arts & Sciences Alumni Success Series, a lecture series that would highlight the professional successes of NKU graduates from the College of Arts & Sciences, David was the first person that came to mind. As I still tell my students, since George Clooney didn't actually graduate from here, David is probably our most successful alumni. Even if many of them have never heard of him. Of course, I think that is going to change.

As you look around this room, you can see the scope and complexity of David Mack the artist. You even get a brief introduction to David Mack the writer by seeing his pages laid out not to mention his occasional notes scrawled along the walls. But what I would like to do in the time allotted me is to take a closer look at David the Writer in my role as a writer and teacher of writing.

One of things that I admire about David Mack the writer is the complexity and sophistication of his writing. All stories have basic elements such as setting, characters, and conflict. Better stories develop themes and tone and mood. Memorable stories have complexities and use a variety of literary tools to enhance all of the basic elements. David is good at using such tools to tell his story both through the art and the writing. Such tools include metaphor, symbolism, and allusion. David uses all of these tools from the beginning to the end of his story for Kabuki.

Let's start with characters since it is very hard to have a story without characters. A friend of mine who also teaches creative writing asks his students to create a character that is as opposite from themselves as they can imagine. His young white female students bring in young white female hookers. How are they different? He asks. Are you're saying I'm a tramp they reply. What about an old, poor, African American man? He suggests. With Kabuki, David has created a believable character that is female and Japanese. While they may be about the same age, this is a character that is pretty far the opposite of David. Kabuki, also Ukiko, is Ainu and Japanese, a dual heritage. She is a trained assassin. She is horribly scarred, internally and externally. She is trying to figure out who she is and what her purpose in life is. She is trying to find her face. But the best part of all this is that David makes Kabuki believable. Readers empathize with her. They care about what happens to her. She is fully realized and shaped, not just by the pencil lines and brush strokes but by the writing. And why does she seem real? A few nights ago at his opening, as well as earlier this morning, David mentioned that Kabuki was autobiographical, except that he made the character female and Japanese/Ainu and set in a different culture. It reminded me of what I tell my creative writing classes.

Fiction based on personal events is tough to write. The way something happened it real life does not necessarily translate well to fiction. It is better to take the emotions and feelings that you have experienced and convey those while making the character different from yourself. I think that is why Kabuki is believable. Her emotions and reactions are real. We empathize with her. Readers recognize real feelings.

Of course, Kabuki is not the sole inhabitant of her own universe. David has created a host of other interesting and believable characters. But I don't have time to talk about all of them right now. However, I would like to talk about Akemi, the fellow inmate/prisoner at the Control Corps Asylum that communicates with Kabuki through origami missives. The reason I want to focus on her is that unlike most of the other characters in the comic, we meet her first through the words of her messages before we ever see a visual representation of her on the page.

Akemi communicates by folding pieces of toilet paper into origami figures and then throwing them through the vent into Kabuki's cell. She writes her messages with a pen she keeps hidden in a place the guards will not look. In case you haven't read that far, I won't ruin it for you. But with these notes, David follows the most basic of creative writing rules: Show, Don't Tell. What do these notes show? Akemi is resourceful. She is creative. She is clever. She is intelligent. She is Kabuki's friend. She has a sense of humor. Even when Kabuki herself doesn't know whether to believe in Akemi, the readers do. Or at least believe that there is a real personality behind the notes.

Again, this may come back to the autobiographical nature of this work. One of Akemi's notes reads "I enjoy endowing patterns with meaning..." What a perfect description of David's work. Patterns with meaning. And in fact, David's work can be compared to Akemi's origami. His work, both written and visual, needs to be unfolded by the reader in order for the reader to get meaning from it. Sometimes this unfolding is almost literal as you have to move the book around to read all of the writing on the page. You have to shift the book to odd angles, almost folding it and unfolding it as you go along. And Akemi is another real character that the reader finds in the unfolding.

So what else do you need in a story besides character? You need a setting. The setting for Kabuki echoes what I mentioned earlier about autobiographical writing. David sets his story in a near-futuristic Japan where the Agents of Noh “attempt to neutralize the corruption between the government and organized crime” and Tokyo is a city “who's technology has surpassed it's humanity.”

But this is a setting where trained female assassins are believable. I think they would have been much more conspicuous in Bromley, KY or even Newport. In fact, it is no stretch to describe this futuristic Japan as a dystopia, the opposite of utopia, the worst place to live. Yakuza and Chinese gangs run through the city. The worst of sexual perversions can be found in the Red Light district and assassinations and corruption seem common. But here I want to mention one of a writer's tools that David uses to enhance the dystopian atmosphere of Kabuki's world. On the page and in the descriptions, it is easy to see the city as a horrible place to leave. But through the use of allusion, David has added another layer for those who catch the allusions. You do not have to get the allusions to understand what this world is like, but it does add complexity and another fold in the origami.

The chief allusion in the setting in Circle of Blood is to George Orwell's dystopian classic, 1984. This is apparent when Kabuki, appearing on the Noh channel, tells her viewers that “Little sister is watching.” Even people who cannot trace the phrase back to its original source have heard that “Big Brother is watching.” Besides 1984, the Japan of Kabuki has a cyberpunk feel. In the 1980s, the cyberpunk dystopia was big movement in the science fiction field. Cyberpunk usually dealt with the idea of cybernetic advancements in humans and the effects of a virtual society mixed with punk elements like street gangs and violence. It also acknowledged Japanese influence on American Culture and science. Kai, one of the villain's of Circle of Blood has an adolescent computer hacker genius named, aptly, Link. He is a perfect example of a cyberpunk character. The narration even states that “information is the ultimate weapon and data is status.” One the most famous examples of cyberpunk is William Gibson's Neuromancer. Whether or not David meant this particular part as an allusion, I'm not sure, but one of Kai's henchmen is Cowboy, which is also the slang term for cyber hackers in Neuromancer. Later on in Skin Deep, Akemi directly alludes to William Gibson: “William Gibson called cyberspace 'a fluid origami trick.'” Reading that quote confirmed that David was familiar with Gibson's work and added another fold in the complexity of Kabuki.

The other key elements for stories, conflict and plot, go without saying. You can certainly find plenty of each throughout the books. But again, what makes Kabuki work so well is that there are layers of conflict and plot. For instance, in a Circle of Blood, there are several different conflicts of several different types. We have person vs. person conflict such as Kabuki vs. Kai; person vs. society such as Kabuki vs. the dominant philosophy and corruption of her society; and of course, person vs. self. Kabuki has many internal conflicts about loyalty, her origins, her identity, the ghost of her mother. All of the plots work together and create the rich text that we have here.

I already mentioned some of David's use of allusion in regards to the setting. He also uses allusion to enhance other aspects of the story such as theme. For instance, Circle of Blood, Act 1 is called “Ghosts in the Looking Glass” and Act 5 is called “The Mad Tea Party,” both coming from Lewis Carrol's Alice stories. As David's friend Takashi Hattori points out in his afterword, the allusions are used to indicate that Kabuki is on a journey through a wonderland filled with such odd characters as Alice encounters in her journey. Hattori points out the correlation between the agents of Noh and the characters that Alice encounters such as the twin assassins code named Siamese as being analogous to Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. Wonderland is also used in a direct allusion when the prodigy Link wants to know why there are rabbits hopping around. He is directed to follow the rabbits into Wonderland, in this case, cyberspace, as he works out the problems in Kai's Neverland project. Kabuki also shouts out to the directors “You're all just a pack of cards” as she recognizes the insanity and hypocrisy of the situation at the end of the story.

When Akemi is sending her origami messages, she folds them into shapes of animals. At one point, she tosses down a paper unicorn. Kabuki mentions “I'd love to keep them all. I could use the company. I'd have my own 'paper menagerie' complete with unicorn.” It's a small line but again, a loaded allusion to Tennessee William's play The Glass Menagerie. At this point in the story, Kabuki is trapped inside the Control Corps asylum and unable to face or know what reality is. In the play, the character of Laura has her own glass menagerie that she plays with so she doesn't have to deal with the real world and its problems. The allusion is more than showing off or a literary game. It once again adds another layer for those who catch it.

Another literary tool that David uses well is the symbol, something that stands for something else. Symbols are abundant throughout the Kabuki books. Takashi Hattori does an excellent job of pointing out many of the symbols in Circle of Blood, including all the symbolic layers of the title itself, the significance of Kabuki's sickles, and the statue of her mother among others. If you haven't read that afterword, I highly recommend that you do. But I want to talk about some symbols in the last story arc, Metamorphosis. In part three, “Retina Escape,” Akemi tells some of her own background to Kabuki. She mentions seeing a butterfly collection at the Tokyo zoo. Each butterfly was pinned down and labeled. Akemi realizes though that she “much more enjoyed butterflies fluttering about in the air.” It is easy to see the butterfly as symbolic of both Akemi and Kabuki, both being trapped as they are in the asylum. A page or so later, Akemi explicitly connects the butterflies to herself. Since her doctor has been trying to determine Akemi's psychological profile, Akemi decides that she “will not be pin downed and labeled as part of the collection in this human zoo.” Its an effective, explicit symbol.

However, the symbolism of the butterfly doesn't stop there. Besides being symbols of freedom, butterflies are also the quintessential symbol for metamorphosis, for change. After all, the caterpillar becomes the beautiful butterfly. David uses this symbolic aspect of the butterfly as well, both explicitly and subtly. When Kabuki is fighting for her life with one of her sister agents, she mentions that the square of paper that Akemi gave her has changed into a butterfly. “It is my metamorphosis from inside out.” Besides referring to her specific actions in that scene, it also both describes what has happened before and foreshadows the future. Kabuki has been trapped in the asylum, her cocoon, and will soon break free, to fly, without being pinned down. Likewise, much of her mental scars and emotional burdens, her psychological cocoon, is shed as well. Not only does she become physically free, she becomes psychologically free.

Before I talked about the origami working both in the story and as a comparison to the books themselves. Similarly, the idea of metamorphosis can probably be given to David's work on these books. While I'm not suggesting that his earlier work was a cocoon, the volumes of Kabuki show David's change and metamorphosis as a writer and an artist. It is a fitting symbol.

Another symbol used in Metamorphosis is the goldfish. Kabuki tells Akemi about reading a story to her goldfish Mizuko, a name meaning child of the water. Since Kabuki's given name Ukiko means “rain”, we already get an idea of the connection between them. Besides the fact that Mizuko was Kabuki's friend, the General, Kabuki's foster parent, makes her throw the apparently dead fish into the river. Kabuki has always told herself that Mizuko was only sleeping and once in the river, grew to a much larger size. Like the butterfly, Mizuko becomes a symbol of Kabuki and a bit of foreshadowing towards the end. Like Mizuko, Kabuki is believed to be dead. Like Mizuko, she escapes into the water (in this case the rain). The implication, is that once free of Control Corps and the Noh, she will grow to a size fitting of her surroundings, she will reach her full potential. The character of Buddha even tells Kabuki she must take the same path her goldfish took. When Kabuki throws the skinned face of her attacker into the water, the fish, including a giant goldfish Kabuki calls Mizuko, eat it. Since the agents of Noh believe it is Kabuki who is killed, the fish eating the face, represents the fish eating her past, her past identity. She is going to be free from the past as well as the Control Corps asylum.

I would like to talk about one more symbol. The rain. Hattori points out that Circle of Blood starts with the lines “The rainy season” has begun, signifying more than just the weather. Since Kabuki's given name means “Rain,” the very first line of the book gives double meaning. Kabuki's story has begun. At the end of the story, she leaves the Board of Director's office, she walks out wounded, into the rain. When she reaches her mother's grave, the rain stops. At this point, the weather again works symbolically. By having the rain stop, David suggests that Kabuki may stop, may die form her wounds. He leaves us with a final image of the dying Kabuki. Luckily for the readers anyway, Kabuki does not die there. She is taken to Control Corps. At one point she mentions having a dream where the rain washes her scars away. When she finally escapes from Control Corps, she admits that the rain has washed her scars away. Since her physical scars on her face still exist, we know that it is the internal scars that have been washed away, and not by the precipitation falling from the sky. The scars have been washed away by Ukiko, rain, by Kabuki herself. She is the only one who can take her scars away. And structurally, Kabuki's story ends where it started, in the rain.

There is so much more that I could talk about. I could mention the fact that the later books are perfect examples of a post-modern comic book, deliberately deconstructing the normal expectations of the genre and filled with playful self-referential bits to the author. If I knew more about Japan, I'm sure I could talk about David's use of history and cultural references. I could mention so many different things. But I already feel like one of Akemi's zoologists, trying to pin down and label a beautiful butterfly. So, instead of saying more, I will stop and let you experience the butterfly in its natural state for yourself.

Hi Brandon,
Thank you for your interest in this.
Here are the NKU people to talk to:

Kevin Booher (the drawing professor who got all this rolling) kbooher@insightbb.com
And David Knight (the NKU gallery director) knight@nku.edu

I'm sure they can tell you what is involved and needed to export the show to your school.
Kindest regards,
David Mack

Just wondering if you guys have seen this before. It was a "web exclusive" i happened to chance over:
http://209.95.35.130/images/sept11/mack1.jpg

Then I did the charity piece called "diagram of heroes" immediatly after for the Marvel 9/11 benifit book.

But this picture you showed, I never made available to the public. I never published it anywhere or sold it or anything. I e-mailed it to a couple close friends and family but never presented it in any public forum. I think I may have sent it to a charity event but I don't remember the details. And I haven't looked at it since.

So I'm curious as to where this came from.

DM

Dear Smokinghawk,

It is a delight to hear from you. Thank you for reading my stories and for your kind words and encouraging feedback. I can’t tell you how much it means to me that you appreciate the work, and that you said the art looks the way you “feel”. That is about the best response I could ask for from someone with your personal knowledge and experience.

I’m glad that you appreciate my efforts.
I appreciate the questions that you asked and I am happy to answer them. I don’t at all mind you asking these things. I’d like you to know that I have carefully considered the points you mentioned ahead of time and would be happy to share with you the reasoning behind my approach.

I’d be happy to hear what you think about my responses. I don’t want to sound like a “know-it-all” either and I will be happy to defer to your knowledge. But I want you to know that thought and consideration went into these choices for various reasons, and I will be happy to hear your advice about if my reasoning is valid or flawed. I’ll list your questions one by one below:

-1)“What is Echo's tribal heritage again? I had thought it was Cherokee.“

Before I go on, I want to make sure you read the Echo Part 3 issue. It is in Daredevil #52 in which her father describes her heritage. I will list that portion of the script here in case you missed that issue:

DD #53: PAGE 14

1 FATHER CAPTIONS- In 1832, Jackson, the guy on the twenty dollar money, signed an autograph to remove the native tribes.

2 CAPTION-It was then that my Grandfather's tribe and many other tribes, the Chickasaws, Choctaws, Cherokee, Muskogee... They were called the Creek Indians, but that is only because they lived by the Creek and people called them that.

3 CAPTION-They are really the Muskogee Nation. So them and many more nations. They were all rounded up and made to walk all the way to what the government called "Indian Territory". Later they called this territory Oklahoma. That's a Choctaw word that means "red man's land".

4 CAPTIONS- There was no choice in the moving. All the tribes were forced to leave their homeland. Those people walked the entire distance, from sunup to sun down, herded along by soldiers on horseback.

5 CAPTION- Not everyone was strong enough to make the trip. In fact most of our people died on the way. And the rest were not allowed to give them a proper burial.

6 CAPTION- That is why it is called the trail of tears.

PAGE 15

1 FATHER Balloon-The children were taken from their parents and forced to go to boarding schools. They were not allowed to speak their native tongues. They were not allowed to tell their own stories. So my grandfather had to remember all of the stories.

2 Balloon-My grandfather lost all of his family from his own tribe. But he married someone from another tribe that he met in the new territory and they had my mother. He told all of his stories to my mother.

3 Balloon- But soon my mother lost all of her family. So she married someone from another tribe and they had me. And they told all of their stories to me.

4 Balloon- And then I came all the way here to the city and I met someone not in any of those tribes.

5 Balloon- And now I have you. And I tell all of my stories to you.

6 Balloon- All of that traveling and joining parents and grandparents has made you.

7 Balloon- You are the future of all of their stories.

8 Balloon- It's good that you don't hear in words or think only in words.

9 Balloon- This way you don't hear only lies. You see by actions what the truth is. And you tell your own truth by actions.

---Instead of making Echo of one specific tribe, I wanted to show that she was a product of many nations. And many joinings and in her burns the spirit of many stories beyond one ethnic classification. I wanted to keep her heritage inclusive rather than exclusive. I wanted her to be appreciative of all the heritages and stories that she is made up of and I wanted her to think of herself as a character that goes beyond boundaries and borders (this is clarified in the fifth issue of the story). Metaphorically, I thought people could relate to her this way and appreciate their own diverse backgrounds joining together in the past to make them what they are today.

I wanted her to look at the stories as a unifying mythology rather than a divisive one. I think this will be more clear at the end of the story where the point is that her role in life is one that can transcend divisions.

2)-“ One criticism I have of so much Indian affecionado commentary by non-Indians is that it uses Sioux cosmology/ceremony as the ubiquitous reference-point. EVERYBODY who uses Indian traditionalism seems to use some version of Lakota background, no matter what the ostensible tribe.”

-Hopefully it is obvious that “The Chief” (firefighter or editor, now retired) is Sioux. That is why everything that he says is in Sioux based cosmology, and he is helping Echo in the best way he knows how, which entails his use of the Sioux language and customs. And she is appreciative of his customs as well.

3)- “"shaman" (ouch! That word makes me cringe a little; it's a Siberian term often eschewed by Indian traditional people since it's also a favorite with the "New Age" crowd)”

-I understand what you mean. It is a term bandied about and abused.
Are you familiar with the Ojibwa artist Norval Morisseau? I’m a big fan of his art work. His work deals with depicting stories in a way that he believes has a healing power through the story and the art. And he refers to himself with the term shaman. I’m attempting to use the role of the storyteller in this story in the same way, so I used the same term he uses for himself. And there are other Native storytellers that refer to themselves in this way so I tried to draw the parallel by using the same term.

These are just my reasoning behind using the terms and customs that you mentioned. I hope they are valid to you in this context. I am, of course, always open to hearing advice from someone who knows better than I do.

I am happy to hear that you are an artist. I would love to hear about your approach to your work. Or perhaps a link to a website of your work if there is one?
I have an uncle who is Cherokee and when I was little he would tell me his stories and have me draw some of his cultural images to go with his descriptions. It made an impression on me, and this story is a chance for me to explore the role of artists and storytellers in Native culture but also in current conventional popular culture. The idea is that stories and art can unify beyond language, cultures, and handicaps. Even the deaf can learn to see the sign language of the divine. Which is of course just a literary metaphor for all of us.

Thanks so much for support and the kind words!

Warmest regards,
David Mack