Many Deaths of Laila Starr

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I don't think I've been as pleasantly surprised by a one volume story since I read Daytripper a decade ago. However, the ending was really beneficial for coming to terms with your mortality which I appreciated as I’d be a waterworks mess if not. The moment when young Darius is confronted with the fleeting nature and sanctity of life is rendered by introducing Bardhan as visually parallel to a tree that Darius is grasping, and then, in the next panel, drawn gigantic (Bardhan’s skin and the bark given a similar tone) as if he, himself, were a looming tree. But will Laila take her chance to permanently reverse the course of (future) history…or does a more shocking fate await her? Plus it is absolutely gorgeous to look at, with a sharp art style brought to life in heaping doses of arrestingly bright color palettes.

However, “Laila Starr” is more than the sum of its parts; its sleeper diasporic cultural references, gorgeously fluid art and Hindu mythology-inspired storyline work to create something bigger.The reason is that someone is about to be born, Darius, that is going to grow up and invent immortality for humanity. When the unnamed chief deity, presumably Brahma, is introduced, three windows are behind him, mirroring the paneling of the upper and lower tiers of the page.

The omnipotent Laila follows Darius from a distance throughout his days, revealing herself at five stages of Darius’s life, from his birth to the mystery of his final days. Death gets laid off by her pantheon of gods when a child is born who will one day find the cure for mortality. For what is ultimately a very straightforward story with what could be considered a predictable plot, The Many Deaths of Laila Starr has immediately implanted itself in the roots of my brain. It’s nice to be seen, especially if it’s executed with the highest merits as opposed to diversity for the sake of it).Darius tells Laila of recent events, most of them tinged with loss and guilt, and, predictably, Laila/Death starts to respect the sanctity of human life. Rigidity is internally represented by the frequent inclusion of Mumbai’s skyscrapers—even the gods work in a silver tower.

Will Laila take her chance to stop mankind from permanently altering the cycle of life, or will death really become a thing of the past? and illustrated by Filipe Andrade is an unexpected explosion of reflections on immortality in the modern age.

I think when you read a lot of something, lets say a comic series or comics in general, you get to a point where you have to step out of the inertia of it all and start looking for comics that at the very least have a purpose for existing beyond simply continuing the machine of serialized comics, and most I find do not so when the ones that pop up do they should be recognized. Maybe the ending is too tidy, and maybe the character arc for Death is somewhat truncated, but I don't care. And he probably would not have side-stepped the advancements or changes in the world that should be evident in a timeline that runs all the way up through the 2080s.