The Many Deaths of Laila Starr #3

The Many Deaths of Laila Starr #3

BOOM! Studios 2021

Written by Ram V

Illustrated by Filipe Andrade

Colour Assists by Inês Amaro

Lettered by Andworld Design

* More years have passed when Laila Starr, the now-mortal reincarnation of the avatar of Death, once again crosses paths with the future creator of immortality.

* This time at a party where the young man will have a life-altering experience that will shape him for years to come. Will Laila change his path in this one night, or the other way around?

This is a beautifully crafted series so far. Ram really takes the ideas of life, reincarnation and immortality and infuses them into this rich tapestry that surrounds the lives of two people who are destined to be a part of each others lives in ways neither of them will ever understand, know or comprehend. There really is something about the way that this is being told where you can talk to a stranger at a party and say things to them that you’d never dare speak aloud to those that know you. It’s honesty in its more pure form and to see Darius talk about his best friend and not know whom he was attracted to, his girlfriend or himself, is the kind of frankness that is reserved for strangers and I’ve never understood why that is.

I will say that I am a huge fan of the way that this is being told. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented perfectly. The character development that we see through the narration, the dialogue, the character interaction and how we see them act and react to the situations and circumstances they encounter is bloody brilliant. The pacing is superb and as it takes us through the pages revealing more and more of the story we are drawn into this more deeply than we’d dare imagined was possible.

How we see this being structured and how the layers within the story continue to grow, evolve, strengthen and emerge with each new encounter is truly magnificent to see. How the moments that we see add depth and complexity to the book is awe inspiring. How everything works together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is beautifully achieved.

The interiors here are absolutely stunning. The linework is fantastic and how we see the varying weights being utilised to create the detail work that we see is simply sublime. There is an ethereal quality at times to the linework that seems so delicate and yet so strong like the individual strands of a spiders web. Normally I’d say I want to see more backgrounds being utilised throughout but honestly it’s all about the composition within the panels and how they show depth perception, a sense of scale and that overall sense of size and scope to the story which is marvellously rendered. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show such a brilliant eye for storytelling. The colour work is divine. The choices of colours we see and how the various hues and tones within them are being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work is truly inspired stuff. It looks more like Holi than traditional colouring and I think with the setting and subject matter it’s much more appropriate to see it this way.

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This is so intelligently written and with such great diversity in the characters we see and then to have that frank honesty throughout just engages the reader beautifully. This is one of those books that on the surface sounds cute and interesting and then when you dig below the surface and actually read the story you find that it is so much deeper and revealing in what we see as human nature.