Death, in her new avatar of the mortal Laila Starr, is doing her damnedest to prevent the invention of immortality that would put her out of a job â only an inconvenient death means sheâs lost the child prophesied to bring it all about. The child in question, Darius Shah, has had eight years to learn about life and the world. A chance encounter at a funeral teaches them both about what death means to the mortals left behind, in The Many Deaths of Laila Starr #2, written by Ram V, illustrated by Filipe Andrade with color assist by InĂȘs Amaro and lettered by AndWorld Design.Â
Andrea Ayres: Armaan! We are back to talk about issue #2 of The Many Deaths of Laila Starr, and thereâs a lot to discuss. The work Filipe Andrade and InĂȘs Amaro do is striking here, as it was in the first issue. The beautiful washes of vibrant purples, blues and oranges. The issue feels like a sunset, bittersweet and melancholic. âThe Knowledge of Crowsâ struck me even more than it might have, considering the images pouring into the U.S. out of India over the past few weeks. What were your initial impressions?
Armaan Babu: Itâs good to be back, discussing what may be one of my favorite comics of the year, for what may just be one of my favorite single issues of the year so far. This issue hit home for me in more ways than one, and I donât know how to summarize it in an opening paragraph. Itâs a powerfully relevant issue. Iâm eager to get right into discussing it.
We Donât All See the Same Sky
AA: The issue opens with the avatar of Death talking to a funeral crow named Kah. Kah carries the souls of the recently deceased in exchange for rice from mourners. The pair sit on the edge of a building overlooking Mumbai. Laila is forlorn. She has no idea how to find Darius â the child who will discover the key to immortality â in such a massive city.
The flashes of Mumbai in the opening few pages feel like the blink of an eye. Each time we close an eyelid, something new draws our attention. It is a constant hum of life. Iâd love to know what you thought about our introduction to Kah and another view of Mumbai here?
AB: I love me a talking animal guide, and Kahâs delightful. I like how comfortable they are with Laila â just hopping onto her shoulder, ready to show her around the city. Iâve only been to Mumbai myself a handful of times, but the city leaves an impression â one the art brings to life surprisingly well.
So, thereâs something weird Iâve noticed about the skies in America.
Theyâre different.
At least, it feels that way. Daylight in the States is not the same as the daylight you get here. I donât know what it is or how to describe it. All I know is that the way Andrade and Amaro color Mumbai? They get it. You describe that constant hum, there are so many memories here.
There are panels where the color choices bring blasts of Mumbai heat rising off the page. Or the cool coastal twilight breeze is coming in from the ocean. The cozy details in the art, like how the steam rises from cooking pots or the trash piles up in the streets, mixed with those colors â there are some panels I can practically smell.
We donât just get a glimpse of it from Kah and Lailaâs perspective here, either. We move from them to catch up with our prophecy child, Darius Shah, and the day he ran away from home to get to an important funeral. Thereâs a flashback to how Darius met Bardhan, the man whose funeral this is. What were your first impressions of Bardhan and his story here?
AA: I love you bringing up how the skies are different. The sun gives a city a language, feeling and mood. We donât all see the same sky. What I feel so deeply about this issue is how you describe it; this is the work of people who get it. Now, letâs dive into the story of Darius and Bardhan.
Donât Forget Me
AA: The image of Bardhan â his tall, lanky limbs, and the extreme hunch of his back as he works. Bardhan is described as a man with âgranite skinâ and âtired amber eyes.â Ramâs language pierces.
The panel reminds me of âThe Gleanersâ (Jean-Francois Millet, 1857) and âThe Stone Breakersâ (Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, 1849). They are artworks that depict the human body at work: the deep bow of the back, the tension of muscles and the pain of physical labor. Itâs not often depicted in popular culture. We do not frequently see the complex nature of back-breaking work.
Bardhan has a name and a story. His humanity extends beyond the mere physicality of his labor. It is both heartbreaking and touching. The glimpses of joy he shares with Darius are panels I will reflect on for some time. How did you feel about their story?
AB: That is beautifully put. Seeing the traditionally overlooked in society appears to be a theme of this issue. I love how youâve illuminated what makes Bardhanâs story so important.
The flashback brought up a lot for me. Dariusâs childhood summers with Bardhan are spent on the outskirts of Mumbai. There he is amongst mango, jackfruit and sapodilla. Here they are known as chikoo. I have never read a comic more familiar to me. This was my childhood. I have extended family that lives in Dahanu, a town on the outskirts of Mumbai, where Iâve spent many wonderful summers on my uncleâs chikoo farm. There are differences, of course, but it is amazing how well Andrade evokes those summers. It brings that childhood nostalgia creeping in.
Iâm fascinated by Bardhan. Heâs drawn larger than life, as if straight from myth. It feels like his exaggerated proportions are us seeing him straight through Dariusâ eight-year-old-eyes.
So you mention how he is named, letâs talk about names for a bit. After the last issue, I dove into full research mode regarding Hindu mythology. The mythology presented in The Many Deaths of Laila Starr is only loosely connected. It led to me finding out that Pranah (name of this seriesâ God of Life) just means âLife.â The way Bardhanâs name was presented felt significant, so I looked that up and asked around. Bardhan is a Bengali surname that can mean a number of things, which most notably include âGrowthâ and âProgress.â This is fitting for a gardener who was pivotal to Dariusâ early development.
I looked up all the other names not counting the gods taken from actual myth. With names like Brahma and Agni, it looks like Ram is having a lot of fun with these. The name “Darius” refers to someone who possesses much goodness, or someone who holds fast to that which is good. It can also denote royalty, which Ram doubles down on with his last name, Shah, which means âking.â
As for our Starr character, Laila herself? I canât find a meaning for Starr, aside from the pun I just used. âLailaâ means âNightâ or âDarkness.â It is a name given to girls born at night. I donât know what time of day the original Laila Starr was born, but she died at night â and Death was born into her body at night, as well. As I mentioned last issue, Death is based on the Goddess Kali. The name can be translated to âShe Who is Death.â Perhaps more relevantly, âShe Who Is Black.â âKaliâ is the female version of the word for black. The only characters who donât have significant names are the ghost MunMun and the crow Kah. Interestingly enough those are the beings that only Laila sees.
AA: I love that you did a deep dive into the names. What is beautiful about this comic and what keeps pulling me back are those evocations of nostalgia. I have a different cultural experience, growing up in the Midwestern suburbs, but childhoodâs universality is precisely that. Play, curiosity, exploration are part of the childhood experience no matter where you are.
Parents try to mold and shape childrenâs curiosity, but it does not know a linear path. Children are pliable and malleable. They see adults as adults allow themselves to be seen. Bardhan is honest and authentic in his relationship with Darius. He speaks to the child using straightforward language. It contrasts with how other adults talk to him. I’m thinking of his mother, who explains why Bardhan is not allowed jackfruit. âBecause they are not for him, child, and you shouldnât encourage him to think so.â
Parents set unspoken boundaries and rules for how children come to view others in our world. This scene is one of those small, seemingly inconsequential moments that end up shaping Dariusâ life. What did you think of the moment when Darius gives Bardhan the jackfruit? Iâd also like to know how you felt about the intertwining of Bardhan, Laila, Kah and Dariusâ stories?
AB: We have Darius, a prophecy child. âDarius was not one for simply accepting the rules.â This is a line for someone who is going to change the world. It feels like his act of compassionate rebellion is there to show how he becomes the person meant to end the universal truth, that death comes for all.
The comic then returns us to the present. Bardhanâs funeral is held at the Walkeshwar Temple. Kah explains to Laila what death is like to mortal eyes. This is a new perspective for Laila. There, on the beach, we meet a devastated Darius, who ran away from home to attend the funeral. Laila doesnât recognize the child she once tried to kill, and the two have a conversation about death â whether gods can die and the importance of memories left behind.Â
Darius and Laila are both approaching death from different directions â each brought to the funeral by their respective guides of a sort. At the age of 8, this is probably the first time Darius has truly encountered death. For Laila, itâs something sheâs dealt with in the billions. It seems to be the first time she understands what it means. The avatar of Death and the bringer of Immortality, meeting in the middle at sunset, where day meets night, at a funeral, where the living meets the afterlife. Itâs a profound moment, one enhanced by the wistfulness of twilight skies and the quiet comfort Laila and Darius give to each other.
One thing that interests me â Kah theorizes that as a god, Death found it easy to kill mortals, that she probably doesnât even remember them as the centuries pile on. As a mortal, though, those memories bind, the weight of a life taken is so much more, and thatâs likely why the mortal Laila couldnât kill baby Darius. Weâve seen a lot of stories of gods whoâve been turned mortal. I donât know if this has been previously explored. What do you think of this approach?
Feel the Weight
AA: The funeral scenes are some of the most evocative of any comic Iâve read. It speaks to the impact of restraint on the part of the creative team here.
What is interesting to me here is that as a god, Death cannot pick out the individual lives she has taken. Through Darius and Bardhan, however, we can feel the emotional weight and toll of death and memory. It reminded me of how people have a mental block when it comes to mass casualty events. The more death, the more we dissociate from it. This is a mental process known as psychic numbing. It is often coupled with the cognitive bias known as compassion fade. These issues have been, and continue to be, one of the most challenging components of telling the story of COVID-19. It is why news organizations, at times, try to personalize the many dead using small vignettes.Â
We are both Laila and Darius. We dissociate from the dead if we choose. Yet we are all part of deathâs story. Whether we like it or not. The actions we take to honor the dead tie us to our past, present and future. What I will take away from this issue more than anything is the sensitivity and deference paid to the dead. The color of marigolds, a group of people in collective mourning. COVID-19 has robbed so many of us of mourning.
When I consider this issue in contrast to the images of India coming into Western-media outlets State-side, I pause. Light-skinned reporters stand near funeral pyres with bodies tied and bound. It is not that these images should go unseen, but I wonder if it is all just a spectacle for the living? Without memory or knowledge of these people, what does a single body mean to me? Am I able to grasp the weight of that body or its significance? Iâm still unpacking my feelings. I am curious to know your thoughts about well, all of this?
AB: I wanted it noted that I don’t think that BOOM Studios, the comics creative team or anyone else involved with this comic is responsible for the timing of this â but the fact is, this is a comic book about death, set in India, thatâs coming out at a time when death is at the forefront of every Indianâs mind. As the pandemic rages worse than ever before, weâre not just running out of hospital beds and oxygen cylinders â weâre running out of burial grounds and cremation sites from which to say goodbye to our dead. Even where itâs possible, itâs not safe to have fully attended funerals.
I have very little idea what the news coverage on this has been like for the rest of the world. There are thousands upon thousands more personal stories across social media, in phone calls to friends, in requests for medicines, hospital beds and oxygen. Itâs still very personal here. The sheer overwhelming force of whatâs happening is a good example of the psychic numbing. It doesnât get any less numb just because weâre in the thick of it. It can be hard to know what to do in the face of this loss.
The funeral scene featured in this comic is not just beautiful, it is at once a comforting and painful explanation of why rituals of death matter. I was raised Christian, so Iâve never been to a Hindu funeral, but there is a universality to the way that Kah describes death rituals. No matter what you believe, no matter what you practice, death rituals all have one thing in common: revering the memories of the departed â keeping something back for the land of the living.
Iâm OK with the coldness of the media. Itâs a whole model based on numbers over stories â when youâre reporting on such a global scale, sometimes thatâs all it can be.
Itâs up to stories like this one to remind us whatâs important. I am grateful for a story that talks about death in a way that means so much and is so beautifully told.
Of course, memories do more than tug at oneâs heartstrings â here, the memories of the dead are tugging at Laila, sensing the Death goddess inside and wanting to give her a taste of her own medicine. Another death, another time skip, and Laila wakes up in Pranahâs room, 12 years from the funeral, at a time when Darius would be a young man of 20. What do you think this could mean for whatâs coming?
AA: Death can be a weight. It can pull us under if we donât acknowledge its physical and emotional toll. Humans try to do this through the use of rituals, rites and memories. Still, life goes on, and we forget. Death and pain are blunted. To some extent, it must be for us to progress. I reckon if Laila Starr is about anything, it is about the need to have an ongoing relationship with the dead. I imagine issue #3 will bring us closer to that relationship than ever before.
Musings from Mumbai
- Current tally for the deaths of Laila Starr: 3
- My (Armaanâs) only quibble with the art? The neck feathers of the crows ought to be visibly gray. Itâs the easiest way to be able to tell them apart from ravens.
- Oh god, those variant covers are gorgeous. I love all three covers, but the Jeff Dekal one is so absolutely stunning itâs gotten me (still Armaan) to change my lockscreen for the first time since I got my phone in 2016.
