Comic Review: The Many Deaths of Laila Starr #1 (BOOM! Studios)

From the fertile (Swamp Thing Catwoman etc) mind of writer Ram V and the (Captain Marvel) hands of artist Filipe Andrade comes The Many Deaths of Laila Starr #1, from BOOM! Comics.

It’s startling when a creative team totally ‘gets it’, how comics can transform and magnify and richen a story. And this team does just that. It’s Mumbai, India. The avatar of Death is being fired by a Three-Headed God, due to cutbacks! And then sent to live with the mortals. It’s a long way down from the ivory tower to the human level, and there are surprises and shocks in store for ‘newly a person’ Laila Starr!

Oh, this one is glorious. What a read! Mind shifting, consciousness expanding. And thank you Ram V for locating a comic story in India, and playing with myth and legend. Thank you, Filipe Andrade (colour assists by Inês Amaro) for exaggerating faces, twisting and elongating limbs, and playing with colour and shape. It’s a team comic, this strangely paced, alternatively placed adventure. Hold your breath as the Mumbai atmosphere enters and the scenes start to connect, comically and cosmically.

The costumes and ornaments hold forth, the smooth logic of the strong tale entertain, the path starts to lead us off the well-trodden road, onto a new way, with eternal and infernal intermingled. Great fun and a whale of a tale. Nicely lettered in a Moebius-like style by AndWorld Design.

BOOM! Studios, The Many Deaths of Laila Starr #1, $3.99 for 24 pages of content