Perfect Stars

Perfect Stars

A confession: I don’t really like web comics. I don’t like the way that you can’t regulate your reading speed as you wait for the pages to load. I don’t like their reliance on software-generated illustrations. I dislike their clunky, lettering, more mechanical than even those EC comics of yesteryear. And the comics themselves are often derivative, and lack ambition.

I make an exception for Perfect Stars though.

Perfect Stars is the creation of Jordan Piantedosi, under the pen name Romantic. It’s a web comic that breaks the rules. It’s arty and surprising and unclassifiable. It uses traditional techniques of pen and ink and, over its five year lifespan, it’s constantly evolving.

I know nothing about Piantedosi, except that from the very beginning, there’s a sense of identity and control.  That’s very unusual. The first episode, with its two love-struck mice stuck inside the intestines of a cat, still seems of a piece with the other episodes.

From that start, we meet real-life characters in twisted situations – Oscar Wilde and Bosie, Ernest Hemingway and F Scott Fitzgerald. There are autobiographical moments of unrequited (and requited) love. There are remarkable nonsensical mash-ups that are punky and showy and play around with form. There are dumb gags.

Piantedosi has a very strong sense of design. The early strips are clearly influenced by expressionist painters – Kokoschka and Munch in particular. As the series develops, other influences creep in. You can see a bit of Richard Sala in there, maybe some Linda Barry, definitely Tony Millionaire. These influences don’t overwhelm though – you never doubt who’s in control.

None of the episodes have much in the way of a storyline. They’re random thoughts, mood pieces, sharp and witty barbs. This suits a web comic perfectly, where it’s more difficult to navigate a long and involving narrative. Sometimes though, you do long for something a little more substantial and that’s probably Piantedosi’s next challenge: to take what’s she learned here (because her technical skills aren’t in doubt), and to produce something more sustained and emotionally complex.

Still, that’s a small criticism – this is still a distinctive, original body of work. Watch and see – because on the evidence of what’s here, she’s perfectly capable of producing something quite remarkable in the future.