This series, which had a catchy albeit lengthy title, ran for 30 issues from 1989-1992 under DC's Piranha Press imprint. The series advertised itself as "tales from the edge" and were all written by David Louapre and drawn by Dan Sweetman. The stories were told in 1 and 2 page spread scenes with narrative text. No word balloons. No color.
Beautiful Stories For Ugly Children 1 was entitled "Cotton Candy Autopsy" and told the tale of a group of psychotic clowns on the road/run. Part of the story tried too awkwardly to be well...artsy for lack of a better word, demonstrating how difficult it can be to walk the fine line between "cutting edge" and pretentious, but for the most part it is a well told tale. My favorite one-liner occurs in a scene where the clowns encounter bikers: "If the clown has a natural enemy, it's bikers."
Beautiful Stories For Ugly Children 2 was distinctly less memorable and was a black comedy about suburbanites who were really zombies. It was too cute and far more pretentious than issue 1. And when I say less memorable, I mean it. I hadn't read either of these stories since they were published 15 years ago, yet I recalled most of the clown story and remembered nothing about the suburbanites story.
So why didn't I buy any more issues of this series? The art evoked the mood of the stories incredibly well despite being limited to one panel per portion of the tales. It acually made me laugh so hard in a local comic store, that I was asked to "keep it down" by a hand ful of emo dorks.
My favorite entry was titled: "Cheerleaders on fire" Find this comic...read it... then know you will burn in hell...with a smile on your face.
Beautiful Stories For Ugly Children 1 was entitled "Cotton Candy Autopsy" and told the tale of a group of psychotic clowns on the road/run. Part of the story tried too awkwardly to be well...artsy for lack of a better word, demonstrating how difficult it can be to walk the fine line between "cutting edge" and pretentious, but for the most part it is a well told tale. My favorite one-liner occurs in a scene where the clowns encounter bikers: "If the clown has a natural enemy, it's bikers."
Beautiful Stories For Ugly Children 2 was distinctly less memorable and was a black comedy about suburbanites who were really zombies. It was too cute and far more pretentious than issue 1. And when I say less memorable, I mean it. I hadn't read either of these stories since they were published 15 years ago, yet I recalled most of the clown story and remembered nothing about the suburbanites story.
So why didn't I buy any more issues of this series? The art evoked the mood of the stories incredibly well despite being limited to one panel per portion of the tales. It acually made me laugh so hard in a local comic store, that I was asked to "keep it down" by a hand ful of emo dorks.
My favorite entry was titled: "Cheerleaders on fire" Find this comic...read it... then know you will burn in hell...with a smile on your face.
2 comments:
Even Ugly children should be saved before the cute puppy.
only if the puppies are on fire...
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