Lowlife is a semi-autobiographical comic book

Comic book

A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...

 series written and drawn by Ed Brubaker

Ed Brubaker

Ed Brubaker is an Eisner Award-winning comic book writer and cartoonist. Brubaker first early comics work was primarily in the crime fiction genre with works such as Lowlife, The Fall, Sandman Presents: Dead Boy Detectives and Scene of the Crime...

, published by Slave Labor Graphics

Slave Labor Graphics

Slave Labor Graphics is an independent American comic book publisher, well-known for publishing darkly humorous, offbeat comics.-Company history:...

 and later Caliber Comics

Caliber Comics

Caliber Comics or Caliber Press was an American comic book publisher founded in 1989 by Gary Reed. Featuring primarily creator-owned comics, in the next decade Caliber published over 1300 comics and ranked as one of the America's leading independent publishers...

. Collected editions were put out by Aeon Press and Black Eye Books.

Synopsis

The Comics Journal described the book as following the "frustration and cynicism of disenchanted slacker kids finding excitement in their uneventful lives."

Development

Lowlife was Brubaker's first professional work. The work is semi-autobiographical, based upon the lives of the author and his friends but "with the names changed."

Influences on later work

Brubaker cited his work here as an influence on later works: "I'm exploring the same themes in my Batman comics and my Catwoman comics that I was probably exploring in Lowlife: family relationships, personal relationships, people not being able to escape their past. . . .That's the stuff that interests me, and that's the stuff I write about."

Critical reaction

Lowlife was described by The Stranger

The Stranger (newspaper)

The Stranger is an alternative weekly newspaper in Seattle, Washington, USA. It runs a blog known as Slog.-History:The Stranger was founded by Tim Keck, who had previously co-founded the satirical newspaper The Onion, and cartoonist James Sturm. Its first issue came out on September 23, 1991...

 as "Part fiction, part autobiography, the narratives hover between sincerity and parody, with moments of transcendence that lift it out of the realm of the ordinary comic book."

Collected editions

The series has been collected into a number of trade paperbacks

Trade paperback (comics)

In comics, a trade paperback is a collection of stories originally published in comic books, reprinted in book format, usually capturing one story arc from a single title or a series of stories with a connected story arc or common theme from one or more titles...

:

• Portable Lowlife (48 pages, Aeon
  Aeon
  The word aeon, also spelled eon or æon , originally means "life", and/or "being", though it then tended to mean "age", "forever" or "for eternity". It is a Latin transliteration from the koine Greek word , from the archaic . In Homer it typically refers to life or lifespan...
  
  , 1995, ISBN 1883847168)

• A Complete Lowlife (112 pages, Black Eye Books, 1997, ISBN 0969887477, Top Shelf Productions
  Top Shelf Productions
  Top Shelf Productions is an American publishing company founded in 1997, owned and operated by Chris Staros and Brett Warnock and a small staff. The company is based in Marietta, Georgia, Portland, Oregon, and New York City, New York....
  
  , 2001, ISBN 1891830201)