ANYBODY WHO CARES about the American short story, and how to market same, should look at the (probably unauthorized) online scanning and posting of A Cotton Candy Autopsy. It was the first episode of Dave Louapre and Dan Sweetman’s illustrated-story series, Beautiful Stories for Ugly Children.

Published between 1989 and 1992 by DC Comics’ short-lived Piranha Press division, Beautiful Stories wasn’t a comic book (not even a “grownup” comic book). Rather, Louapre wrote a different (usually darkly humorous) text story for each issue, to which Sweetman added large illustrations (in a different, appropriate style each time).

The various book and magazine incarnations of Beautiful Stories have all been out of print for years. I’ve no idea what Louapre or Sweetman have done since. But the series remains one of the last examples of a big media company packaging and selling an individual short story as a stand-alone, un-anthologized entity unto itself.