Alienation is a recurring theme in the series.
The first serial was "Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron". This serial featured an extremely surreal storyline. Over time Eightball has featured less short comedic and surreal stories and has moved to longer storylines with more focus on character and relationships. Ghost World, could be considered the culmination of this, as it was adapted into a full-length feature film that had reasonable mainstream success.
For the rap artist, see Eightball_(rapper)