The Many Deaths of Laila Starr #5 // Review
The nuanced story of a death goddess comes to a close in The Many Deaths of Laila Starr #5. Writer Ram V, artist Filipe Andrade, and color assistant Inês Amaro close out the series with a beautifully dreamy close. The overall structure of the series has been fun and touching. The close might not precisely bring everything into the sharpest focus, but there are more than enough moments in the script on which to rest, along with gorgeous visuals that have become the series’ greatest successes. It may not amount to a profound revelation in storytelling, but the final issue of the series is a lovely farewell to a very unique graphic story.
Laila Starr is finally given the opportunity to resume the mantle of Death herself. She’s back in the world to meet up with Darius...the man who had invented immortality. It’s going to be an awkward meeting, to be sure, but how will she react to being forced to bear witness to the Death of someone she actually has come to care about? Will even Death change when she sees the nature and value of life from a mortal’s perspective? And isn’t this all starting to echo into a pleasant kind of familiarity?
Ram V has collected a great many mini-stories into the five chapters that comprise Laila’s series. Not every story has been brilliant, but none of them have been bad. The overarching concerns of one out-of-work death goddess and the life of the man who had put her out of a job had the potential for a fascinating dynamic. Still, Ram V continues his journey around the edges of a relationship that seems to be earnestly trying to explore something far more deeper and profound than the nature of life and Death. The wistful stillness of Ram V’s final script in the series echoes something deeply resonant and unspoken.
The stillness of the script is given vivid reality by Andrade and Amaro. The immensity of the Starr’s world continues to feel like a light vacation from reality. The cool colors wash out over a peaceful tropical atmosphere that not only amplifies the casual drama of human existence...it celebrates it. A few moments of genuine strife aside, Starr has been a bit of a five-issue vacation in which the mind might contemplate mortality...and Andrade and Amaro have made that vacation such a great pleasure for the eyes.
As it rests outside of traditional narrative conventions in the comics medium, Ram V, Andrade, and Amaro have put together a pleasantly weird fugue of a dream for page and panel. Like many dreams, it’s got a wispy, ethereal quality that may be difficult to hold onto in a wash of other stories in other forms which present themselves in the future. Though it’s been a hell of a dream, there isn’t actually all that much to hold onto. Starr is an interesting character, but there hasn’t been enough in the course of the series to ground her in a compelling reality.
