I often gripe about comic life in the nineties. The big companies were just so gimmicky that I viewed 90% of comics in that decade unreadable. But one really positive thing was all the weird esoteric independent and foreign comics that suddenly had room to flourish. I fell headfirst into all the interesting manga titles that were now being translated, but another genre that really caught my eye was the artfully painted indy comics like Joseph Lisner's Cry for Dawn, Dan Brereton's Nocturnals, and of course David Mack's Kabuki. Kabuki followed the story of an assassin struggling with her identity in an alternate-future Japan. Honestly, I was in high school at the time and the stories were too intense for me. (I needed upbeat stuff to offset my moody teenage years). But years later I got really into several spin-off series like Kabuki Agents: Scarab. Unfortunately, David Mack wasn't providing much more than an occasional cover for these stories, but they did expose me to the pencils of Rick Mays (who I still follow to this day).
