Writer: Ram V / Penciller: Filipe Andrade / Colour Assists: Inês Amaro / Letterer: AndWorld Design / Logo Design by Marie Krupina / Design by Grace Park / Assistant Editor: Ramiro Portnoy / Editor: Eric Harburn / Boom! Studios.
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24th May 2021 (#2 Released 19th May 2021)
The Pitch: This new series from Ram V and Filip Andrade explores the fine line between living and dying in Mumbai through the lens of magical realism.
This latest book written by the prolific Ram V and drawn by Filipe Andrade offers up a teeming petri dish of ideas and genres. It would be easy to park this in the same garage as The Sandman, but it employs an altogether lighter touch, easing us into the magical realist arena. Playing almost like a screwball comedy from the '30s, but set in the maximum city of Mumbai, Laila Starr is a story of ontological normalisation. Essentially, it goes to great lengths to show Gods to be as normal and petty as us mere mortals. Prone to fits of anger and jealousy as well as worrying about their careers. We start, despite the title’s ideas to the contrary, with birth. For reasons you'll discover, this birth is going to be vitally important. We then meet Death, a many-armed Kali, a career woman who is about to lose her career. Meeting with her boss, a being who has many faces, she's told that although she is as certain as taxes, her services are no longer required. I won't tell you why, because surprise is a key ingredient for vitality in stories and in life. Separated from the very thing that makes her death worth living, Death herself finds herself cast out of the firm, with no pension, retirement plan or opportunity to continue existing and so she makes a deal and takes the body of the recently deceased Laila Starr. Laila it, appears, no longer wants to live, whilst Death hungers for more time. Two beings whose purposes are working against the expected directions of their existence and paths. The essence of many a fine comedy.
DRAMA OFTEN COMES FROM OUR INABILITY TO ACCEPT THE IMMUTABILITY OF THE END.
This is a fun book. Sure we've seen characters have to argue with metaphysical forces for their very existence before, but never has someone who has such a negative impact on the world had to do it. It would be a simple emotional through-line to think of Death as being evil. Indeed, it's amazing how much of our human drama is simply a result of people being unable to come to terms with the immutability of the end. How many stories would fall by the wayside if we truly just accepted that we're all going to die? Of course, one being who should never have to accept their demise is Death herself, but that's just where she finds herself. Like Meet Joe Black, Death finds the limitations of the body she's stolen are many, not least of all that she can die more than once if bad luck should befall her. Luckily, someone is on her side and brings her back once more...
There are limits to how much more I can tell you about the story. Part of the pleasure of this is the way it turns and solves the problems it throws up. Better then to concentrate on Ram's writing and Filipe's art. Ram shows us a being in Death undone by progress. She is simply declared obsolete. It's fitting that this story is set in Mumbai, with its progression and vertical acceleration, which makes you wonder who is becoming obsolete there. Progression can be a destructive force, emotionless and unforgiving... Like Death. We're all making ourselves obsolete, day by day, progression by progression. So Death becomes us and we, in building and advancing... become death. Destroyer of worlds. Andrade and Amaro's colours bleach Mumbai in a radiating sun. The limbs of Andrade's characters stretch upwards, reaching for the light, or bend painfully in ways they shouldn't. There's an energy of youth and sex running through the people in the book. An irrepressible nature that can't be contained. You feel them, running past you in packed, hot streets, bumping you as they go. Laila Starr dies. But she also lives. Make sure you join her and do some living too. After all, we only get one life... if we're lucky.
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