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Comic Review: A Complete Lowlife (Brubaker)

This is not technically an autobiographical comic, although it might as well be. It tells the story of someone in their late teens/early twenties who gets involved with drugs and crime and bad relationships - and not in an overly dramatic way, but one of those realistic, bad-decisions-piling-up ways. It reminds me a lot of people I knew back in high school, where they were basically good people but they sometimes made poor decisions and had to pay the price for it. Here we know that the character would make his way out - he went on to become a succesful comic writer, at least, which I will leave as an exercise for the reader to determine if that is better than crime and drugs - so we know it can't end too tragically. Because of when it takes place and when it was written (late 80's, early 90's) it definitely has the air of "slackerness" around it, but the story manages to keep itself feeling real enough. The artwork is not great, and it makes sense that he seems to do more writing since he became well-known, but it keeps the story feeling personal. And the collection of events don't have a typical narrative flow to them, but they convey the emotions that they are intended to convey appropriately enough. I wonder what parts were real and what parts were not, but I think the tone was probably captured truthfully. And that makes the whole thing seem worthwhile.