THIS REVIEW OF THE MANY DEATHS OF LAILA STARR CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS.
by Arpad Okay. There’s a chapter of The Many Deaths of Laila Starr from the perspective of a cigarette. Just the one. The cigarette burns down to ash, it knows what a cigarette knows, and that’s it. We’re hearing about it (perhaps) because it was kissed by death. She—death, that is—is also extinguished by issue’s end. Her name is Laila Starr. It’s her fate to die. Unlike the cigarette, it’s also her fate to come back. To die again. And come back.
Structure, like music, presents the unpredictable joy of infinite variation based on an expected rhythm. When married to the medium, it’s episodic. From that repetition, the anticipation of how you know what’s coming, the surprise in how you don’t. The story turns, dips, dances. Each issue ends the same way for Laila Starr: she dies. But Laila changes things with each issue; what was the same over and over doesn’t feel the same anymore. Or it does, and the world is different instead of the girl. Once, she was a goddess of death. But if you’ve reached the end of the issue (any issue), she’s almost certainly dead. Or just come back from being dead. Again.
Ram V is a reader’s writer. There are layers of meaning put into Laila Starr that depend on what other stories you’ve read. Yet there’s an instantly approachable clarity to the narrative. The narrative is a character, and the comic’s voice speaks with a big drum boom. The concept behind the book requires ample ands or buts or bullet points for branching ideas. The only way for the goddess of death to get her job back is to kill the man who invents immortality, but every time she tries, it ends in failure and her death. And she gets to try again every time, but increasingly time is getting unstuck, and the death of the immortal man is rushing up to meet the conclusion. But also it’s a love story. Like that.
The intellectual aspect of the story is exciting, right? But V is also telling a story with soul. Death tells us a life story; the end provides a chance to measure how life changes us. Laila Starr makes sure that unspoken matters of living are still present in the story. The soul in the book is equally expressed by illustrator Filipe Andrade. V writes the story being told as a presence that can be felt, and Andrade creates it, an expressive and mythic aesthetic, a visual key that defines the mundane, the magical realism, and the metaphor. Andrade’s art comes from the heart first, then follows the rules as described by the eye. That’s also what I mean by “soul.”
A vivid body language book. Feelings are immense, as are personalities, and it comes out in lively characterization. There’s a Peter Chung feel to Andrade’s figures, the way they stretch into inhuman angles, arms and legs that keep going and going. Where Chung’s bodies are constantly flexing, flesh-tight latex on tightened flesh, V and Andrade are considerably more chill. Laila’s grip is loosed, her fit relaxed. There is a Lindsay Kemp theatrical jauntiness to Andrade’s figures. Their gesticulations project moods. Music. Explicitly showing the poetry in every single moment has an end result larger than life maybe, but big is what we respond to.
The feelings are tremendous. Hand in hand with how Andrade’s depictions of people engulf the reader in the character’s experience (the emotions shown in the art) is the immersive, imaginative color work of Andrade and Inês Amaro (the presence of the moment). A comic through an azure lens. Amaro and Andrade color with jewels and passion fruit, and dusk where the sun sets the sky on fire. The bruise the golden hour leaves before becoming twilight. Dreamy atmosphere, but a dream you can touch. A surreal place you come to recognize as familiar.
And lettering by AndWorld Design. How to give a crow a voice. What does a cigarette talking sound like? What does that look like? The AndWorld letters take up squares of empty space by building around the edges, words that flow loose and large and easy like a hand writing notes; casual, but perfectly chiseled in art deco, professional. The line hits the bottom and bounces. Eric Harburn, the editor, put all the pieces in place. Editors out there making all the buts and ands lead to something.
Laila Starr sings because of the creative harmony. Each person on this book brings their voice, and the opportunity to use the shit out of it is an occasion they all rise to. All of them together, each creator bringing their own unique tone, a crazy-ass jazz chord that grabs the center of the reader’s mind by the ear and doesn’t let go. “If you find Earth boring, just the same old same thing…“
A refreshing read. Intelligent and richly constructed. Rather than pushing boundaries in the way more abstract and experimental comics do, Laila Starr shows through a more traditional approach how far out the boundaries are, what comics are formally capable of. The work of folks who understand the potential of the medium. It’s everything. It feels like a micro press OGN. It feels like a serialized periodical, the product of industry. Like a library book taken out in a dream.
Where it all goes would surprise the student and please the sage. Laila Starr follows the heart. The structure eats itself. Laila dies and cannot die, yet dies again and again. The cycle repeats, but Laila Starr continues, changed by the accumulation of experience. She, who begins chasing a wild idea, is guided by wisdom at the story’s close. Found all these different ways to see life; as many stories-within-the-story about living as there are deaths for Laila Starr.
Upon arriving at the expected destination, what was foretold plays itself out with the bare wit of oracle and incredible circumstance. The people involved are not who they were when they made their plans. The story blossoms with insight as the chaos of the plot rolls to a boil, burning off all set dressing, all pretense, to the core of being. A poet demands nothing less. The same with life.
BOOM! Studios / $29.99
Written by Ram V.
Illustrated by Filipe Andrade.
Colored by Filipe Andrade and Inês Amaro.
Lettered by AndWorld Design.
Edited by Eric Harburn.
9 out of 10
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