Beautiful Stories for Ugly Children #11

The eleventh volume of Piranha Press's mature-readers anthology arrives with one of Dan Sweetman's most quietly unsettling cover images: a pale, wide-eyed figure in a bow tie stares directly at the viewer, flanked by bold yellow daffodils that seem to sprout almost unnervingly from around his head. The juxtaposition of those cheerful blooms against the figure's solemn expression sets exactly the kind of darkly whimsical tone that Dave Louapre and Sweetman made their trademark on this series. With the interior story titled "The Daffodils of Plague Town," this 1990 issue promises the same blend of the beautiful and the deeply strange that keeps readers coming back.