The Many Deaths of Laila Starr Review (Ram V, Filipe Andrade)

Death is fired after being told a boy called Darius has been born who will grow up to unlock the secret for humans to live forever - no more death, no more Death. Corporate downsizing for the non-corporeal! Until Death is also made mortal, filling the body of a recently-deceased young lady called Laila Starr. Now stuck on Earth with the rest of us schmucks, Death/Laila hatches a plan to get her job back: kill Darius…

The Many Deaths of Laila Starr has a fun premise - a sorta Indian take on a Pratchett/Gaiman’s Good Omens-style story - that turns out to be quite dull thanks to a lot of overly-simplistic storytelling.

The tone is like that of a child’s fable (ie. Death is never rendered as scary, inanimate objects and animals talk, etc.) and the story choices reflect the format. So it’s never explained why if Death is “fired”, how come people continue to die - how important could she have been if death happens without her actively reaping the dead? Or how Death keeps coming back in the same body of Laila Starr instead of reincarnating in a different body instead? Or the convenience of how, at each incarnation, Death happens to meet Darius, and at spaced intervals too, arbitrarily different each time but enough to encapsulate a lifetime. The answer to all of those questions is because that’s the plot.

The first issue is fairly solid but, once Death immediately decides to about-face on the plan, the story meanders pointlessly until the very end. It’s unexciting reading for the most part and, without giving anything away about that finale, it’s unsatisfying and dripping with vapid New Age sentiment.

I wasn’t taken with Filipe Andrade’s goopy, funhouse-mirror-style art though I liked the colourfulness of the comic overall. Indian mysticism is nothing if not colourful and I liked that reflected in the visuals. And, even if Ram V’s writing continues to leave me unimpressed, his observation of why funerals are so ritualised because it’s the one aspect of death we have control over, is a pretty smart one (unless he’s just repeating something someone else said).

The Many Deaths of Laila Starr was mostly uninteresting reading with little happening story-wise and a lot of pseudo-spiritualist pontificating. Basically it’s a comic that Paulo Coelho fans will love!