The Many Deaths of Laila Starr

 
The Many Deaths of Laila Starr
by Ram V
art by Philippe Andrade
Boom! Comics

2022

 

 

The Many Deaths of Laila Starr collects a 5-issue comic book miniseries about the goddess of death repeatedly being reincarnated to meet the man who will invent immortality at different points in his life.

 
The man who is destined to invent immortality, Darius, is born in Mumbai, which is the main setting for the story. The gods are more-or-less explicitly Hindu. In her goddess form, Death resembles Kali, although she's never called by that name.

 
In the first issue, Death is called up to the top floor of heaven, here depicted as a corporate skyscraper, where the boss, who looks like Brahma, informs her that the man who will eventually invent immortality is being born, and so she is being laid off. Her severance package is to be granted a mortal life. 

 

Death is reincarnated into a young woman, Laila Starr, who just died in the same hospital where Darius was just born. She goes to kill the infant to stop his invention, but finds that, as a mortal, she can't, even though as a goddess she's taken infants by the millions. Then she accidentally steps into traffic and dies again.

 
In each issue, Death / Laila is re-reincarnated thanks to Pranha, god of life. Each time she meets Darius at a significant moment related to death, and each time she dies by accident after the meeting.

 
She meets Darius as a child, when he runs away from home to attend the funeral of his parents' untouchable gardener. She meets him at a party just as he's passing from being a teenager to being an adult, after his best friend died. She meets him as a middle-aged scientist when his medical research still wasn't far enough along to save his wife. And finally she meets him as an old man on the island of Goa, and she learns what has become of his invention.

 
Although it happens for quite different reasons, the multiple reincarnation reminds me of Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon's comic series Daytripper. For obvious reasons, this comic is somewhat sad, although it's very well written. By turns it both mourns and accepts. 

 
Andrade's art has kind of a sketchy, scribbly quality to it. What I especially like are the colors, which are vibrant and beautiful, especially in the issue set at a house party, which is narrated by a cigarette that Laila and Darius share.