Ghost World is the story of Enid and Rebecca, teenage friends facing the unwelcome prospect of adulthood, and the uncertain future of their complicated relationship. Clowes conjures a balanced semblance, both tender and objective, of their fragile existence, capturing the mundane thrills and hourly tragedies of a waning adolescence, as he follows a tenuous narrative thread through the fragmented lives of these two fully realized young women.

Originally serialized in the pages of the seminal comic book Eightball throughout the mid-1990s, this is a quasi-autobiographical story (the name of one of the protagonists is famously an anagram of the author's name) about two best friends facing the prospect of growing up, and more importantly, apart.