A review by billyjepma
The Many Deaths of Laila Starr by Ram V

adventurous challenging emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

"Each heartbeat, each breath—is a rejection of death."

This leveled me. The first two issues take a clever conceit and have fun with it, exploring it from different thematic angles and using them all to give the character and the idea of death a personality. I was all in, of course, but I also wasn't expecting it to so utterly break my heart and put it back together again. There are moments in this perfectly brief story that take questions and doubts and fears I know intimately well and twist them in such a way to reveal a new insight (revelation?) that I wouldn't have discovered otherwise. 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.

I haven't read nearly enough of Ram V's work, but everything I've touched has been stellar. That said, I'm not convinced that reading every word he's ever written could've prepared me for how surgically concise he is here. He takes cultural ideas and beliefs, combs through them for universal experiences and sentiments, and gives them a wholly unique voice and maybe a little transcendent. His plot is a little looser than I wanted it to be, but it's intentional, I think, as that looseness helps it linger for longer and encourages the reader to fill in the gaps with themselves. Maybe the ending is too tidy, and maybe the character arc is somewhat truncated, but I don't care. Unlike Daytripper, another comic with similar aims, The Many Deaths of Laila Starr doesn't overstay its welcome and knows precisely when and where to shift gears. For a story about life and existence, the series doesn't have any pretensions—it's simple, pure, and magical.

Speaking of magic, I'm going to need Filipe Andrade to become a household name after this. His illustrations are sublime and seem to effortlessly capture all the chaos and busyness of daily life while still finding ways to spotlight how miraculous it all is. The colors are essential for this, as they give each page a flash of surrealist vibrancy that translates the world through the lens of a romanticized memory.

What a book.