“The day the rainbow came to stay, there rose from the gutters a collective voice of madness and wonder, like the precision harmony of a choir being flayed alive”

“Many found it difficult to avoid smiling in the presence of so delightful a phenomenon, and were soon unable to stop. Their cheecks tightened permanetly, and their initial expressions of joy turned to ones of obsession and pain.”

‘Die, Rainbow, Die’ is the story of the sad death of a rainbow and the affect it has on the small town that witnessed the event. It is issue 8 of the ‘Beautiful stories for Ugly Children’ series, written by Dave Loupare and illustrated by Dan Sweetman. It’s not quite a comic book, more of an illustrated short story, and ran for 30 issues, starting in 1989 and finishing in 1992. Their comic career’s didn’t exactly surge after ‘Beautiful Stories’ finished, Loupare wrote an American Freak and very little else I can find. Sweetman made the jump to movies, and worked on storyboards for a lot of well known movies. You can find some of his recent art works here.

The tales varied widely, but were always nicely twisted and stretched their initial idea as far and wide as it could be. Tales such as a woman who dreamed of being a ballerina, but all she could do was tap dance, or what Clowns get up to on their time off.

I first encountered these comics in the old Alchemist’s Head, a comic shop on Dame street. They seemed to have thousands of copies of about five issues of this comic, so they turned up in all sorts of bargain basement bins! I’ve been trying to get the other issues for a while now, which is proving pretty difficult. There’s talk of a collected edition which is being held up by some type of tv deal, according to this, but until such a time, you’ll have to make do with whatever comics you can find on e-bay or other such sites. Find them if you can!