Dave is one of those guys who generate one of two reactions at the mention of his name.

1.  Who? Never heard of him…or

2.  Louapre? That guy’s a genius. (He’s never described as anything else.)

From June 1989 until September 1992, he and illustrator, Dan Sweetman, produced a comic book series called BEAUTIFUL STORIES FOR UGLY CHILDREN for DC Comics under the Piranha Press imprint. It ran for 30 issues and was considered at the time to be ground-breaking. So the ground was broken, but nobody else ever came around to plant some new seeds. The text and illustration approach to an ongoing comic book series was never successfully published again.

It was announced in late 2006 that there would be a collected edition of BSFUC published by a Canadian publisher later that year. It didn’t happen. There was also an entry on Amazon.com that a trade containing the first five issues would be released by BOOM! Studios in October 2008. That didn’t happen either.

Apparently, hopes for a reprint of this so-long-out-of-print masterpiece have been thwarted by a TV deal that has been in the works for years and is tying up the rights.