Originally Aired on:  Dec 13, 2008

So I’m kind of slow to comics. I wasn’t reading comics like I am now, back during the height of it in the late 80’s, early 90’s. A friend of mine introduced me to ‘Beautiful Stories for Ugly Children’ and I was immediately hooked.

Published by Piranha Press, an offshoot of DC Comics, BSFUC blew me away on all levels. It was high comic literature. There were 30 issues and 2 graphic novels. It was beautifully and sparsely illustrated by Dan Sweetman and written by Dave Louapre. Each issue was a stand alone story, though throughout the series you came to discover most of the issues took place in and around Scaulderville. As writer of BSFUC, Dave Louapre challenged all notions of the comic story format. (Though, was it really a comic?) His writing is eloquent, poetic, dark, clever, hopeful, thought provoking, tear inducing, versatile in style and god damn hilarious. BSFUC is officially my favourite comic, forever and ever, amen. I can no longer count the amount of times I uttered, ‘genius’, while re-reading my collection. And I’m not the only one. Long before I even realized it was a comic, I had the first Mr. Bungle CD with the cover for BSFUC #1~ A Cotton Candy Autopsy. For years Mel Gibson was determined to turn it into a TV series.

Dan and Dave have both done other stuff, and we talk about it, but I’ll leave that for you to discover. These days they animate their stories for kicks.

When I stopped doing my show in Vancouver I swore, (cause it was #1 in the “If you could interview anyone in the world, alive, who would it be?” question), that the first guests on my show would be Mr. Louapre and Mr. Sweetman. Unfortunately Mr. Sweetman was busy, but Mr. Louapre was happy to oblige.

‘Beautiful Stories for Ugly Children’ is the comic to give to your friend who only reads books. Good books, none of those trashy romance/murder/mystery/superstar tell alls. Writers like Chuck Palniuk, Lynda Barry, Irvine Welsh, Tom Robbins and Kurt Vonnegut, to name a few. We all have friends like this, maybe you’re one of them. You think that comics can’t be all That challenging or as engrossing as a Book.

I dare you to buy just one issue of BSFUC and not want to read more. I’m that confident. You might not like the art, to each his own, but I guarantee that the story will grab you by the brain tendrils and your central nervous system and not let go until you’ve read the last word.

Postscript

Even though I was almost late, even though the station didn’t have half the music I wanted and even though I couldn’t play Ween doing ‘The Oblongs’ theme song as my opener, I still think the show went rather well. You got to hear some new stations id’s I did. (I love having Audacity at home.) And hopefully my BSFUC readings weren’t too dull. If you want to hear more from Dave Louapre, click on the button, you know you want to. Afterwards run, don’t walk to your nearest comic store and demands some BSFUC. My work here is done.

Playlist

The music choices were mostly picked by Dave Loupre.

• I can’t remember. But I have asked Dave, when he tells me, you shall know.
• Breeders – Do You Love Me Now?
• Sonic Youth – Eric’s Trip
• Bob Mold – I Hate Alternative Rock