Mack attack

Writer-illustrator David Mack has been a geek byword for gritty and gorgeous art ever since he published the iconic graphic novel Kabuki 19 years ago.

Kabuki could soon be on movie screens, with none other than cult graphic novelist Neil Gaiman signing up earlier this month as executive producer of the film version, Mack says in an interview before he arrives for the Singapore Toy, Game and Comic Convention on Aug 31 and Sept 1.

It will be his first visit to Singapore.

Kabuki is named for the lead character, a contemporary female ninja embroiled in deadly corporate espionage. One of the best examples of the literary graphic novel, it is no typical action story, but a complex journey into the psyche of Kabuki, who is scarred by her past and an unreliable narrator.

The Kabuki film is backed by Commonwealth Film Manufacturing, a Los Angeles- based company co-run by Gaiman's assistant Cat Mihos.

Getting Gaiman on board is part of a recent winning streak for Mack, who turns 41 this October.

Before this, the film rights to Kabuki languished with HBO and Fox for over a decade before the artist bought them back in 2005, hoping to move more quickly on his own steam.

He is also being taken seriously in the art world and had brush-and-ink life drawings displayed late last month alongside the art of symbolist Gustav Klimt and illustrator Toulouse-Lautrec at the Century Guild Gallery in Los Angeles.

His cult credibility remains high, with his graphic novel Daredevil: End Of Days hitting the top spot on the New York Times bestseller list for the genre earlier this month.

It features the death of the Marvel Comics' famous red-suited blind hero and is written by Mack's best friend Brian Michael Bendis, who is known for his work on Ultimate Spiderman.

They have been collaborators since Mack inked Bendis' pencil art samples as a favour at a comic convention in 1993, and even launched a comics label, Icon, together, which is now part of the Marvel stable and responsible for publishing creator-owned titles.

The art in End Of Days is not typical of Mack, being much easier to read than the nine-volume Kabuki series he wrote, drew and published between 1994 and 2007 under imprints ranging from Caliber Press to Image comics and Marvel.

The Kabuki books range from all-out action to long internal monologues, they are achingly stylish and some might say overloaded. Only in a Mack book do photo-perfect faces, Chinese ink still-lifes and crayon cartoons co-exist with patchy acrylics, the visuals telling a story often at odds with the text.

Readers may need to physically rotate the graphic novels to follow the wayward art, and Mack relates with glee how fans write in to say Kabuki is tough to read on subway trains.

Yet, he has no plans to make it easier on readers. "The kind of art I do, it's addictive," says Mack, who even insists on his publicity photos being in black and white with paint splashes Photoshopped in later for artistic effect.

He decided to be a comic-book creator in high school. "Here for me was the medium that united all other media. I didn't have to choose, I could be a writer, an artist, I could do photography and painting, anything I wanted. It was richer than other media and a lot more interesting to me," he says.

It was a bold decision for the then 16-year-old, who knew he would have to pay for his artist training himself. His father, who held many blue-collar jobs, and mother, a first-grade teacher, could not afford college tuition.

Mack decided to enlist in the US army, which offered soldiers the chance at a university education. "I actually went there to enlist, but I had braces on and, at that time, you couldn't go for basic training with braces on."

Instead, his high-school teacher in Cincinnati, Ohio, helped him put together an artist portfolio that netted him a full scholarship to Northern Kentucky University. He did his bachelor of fine arts degree in graphic design and also found paying work for a small comics press that paved the way for him to impress big names at comic conventions.

The first volume of Kabuki was done as his senior thesis and later became a cult hit when published by Caliber Press. It so impressed then Marvel Comics editor Joe Quesada at a comics convention that Mack received an offer in 1998 to draw the company's A-list character Daredevil.

It was a dream come true for Mack, who fell in love with the comics universe reading Daredevil when he was nine.

Since then, he has fulfilled other childhood dreams, including publishing a children's story Shy Creatures with Macmillan in 2007 and illustrating two seasons of the online animated series Dexter: Early Cuts, which supplements Showtime's drama Dexter, about a serial killer on the side of justice.

What is next? "I would have thought that I would have had children by now, so I should probably get cracking on that," says Mack, declining to reveal more about his current partner.

Another "baby" on the way is a new Kabuki book, due next year in time for the series' 20th anniversary. After all these years, the series has not lost its charm, the writer admits, even if he does want to fix things he drew at the time.

"I can see them as raw, crude or heavy-handed, but it still has kind of a naive charm," he says. "It's like a look at a different person's work, but every time I'm surprised and I'm just glad I did it."

akshitan@sph.com.sg

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