Potential: The High School Comic Chronicles of Ariel Schrag Review
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"Science is my life!" heroine Ariel proclaims early on in Potential, and it's true. The junior in high school loves her science classes and even tries to figure out with a friend how to distill homemade alcohol--something she thinks would be both a good learning experience and fun.
But there are other, more pressing issues that Ariel must deal with in her junior year of high school. For one thing, she had settled on the label of bisexual after her sophomore year experiences, but she's definitely feeling more and more drawn to the lesbian side. Now if only she could figure out how to navigate the tricky emotional waters of dating during the teenage years.
Ariel Schrag's true-life series of work--which began with freshman year in Awkward and continued in sophomore year's Definition--is as brave as it is funny. Schrag completed each work in the summer after each respective school year, not only putting her own life squarely under the microscope, but also telling the stories of her friends, family, and acquaintances. As her classmates at Berkeley High School in the mid- to late '90s learned, nothing was secret or sacred.
Schrag's abilities both as an artist and a storyteller have greatly improved by the time of Potential. Awkward was a potpourri of images, sometimes far too crowded for one page, but Definition showed real evolution in her work. With Potential, she allows herself plenty of room in which to pace her story, starting slowly with her puppy love relationship with a boy and moving on to the more complicated territory of her lesbian dating life and the emotional effects of her parents' divorce.
Potential, like the work that preceded it, succeeds on several levels, not least of which is that Schrag doesn't rehash coming-of-age tales we've read before. Instead, it's a fresh take on teen years, one set in a modern age where homosexuality doesn't have to be hidden. That doesn't necessarily make it any easier for the author, but it's refreshing for the reader to follow a young woman who's confident in her own sense of self.
Schrag doesn't shy away from mature themes in her work, nor does she sugarcoat it. She offers an honest account of the awkwardness and thrills of discovering one's self and one's sexual identity. It's a bonus that all of this is coupled with a more daring (and often quite strikingly beautiful) drawing style. Schrag can go from cartoony to chiaroscuro within a page, which mirrors the complexities of her story.
It's a wonderful experience growing up with Schrag and experiencing her teen years vicariously. Later this year, Touchstone will release Likewise, where senior year hits and the story of Schrag's high-school career comes to an end. One can only hope that her post-high-school years were as eventful and fun as this, and that Schrag will decide to keep entertaining us with her wit.
-- John Hogan
Potential: The High School Comic Chronicles of Ariel Schrag Feature
- ISBN13: 9781416552352
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Ariel Schrag continues her tumultuous passage through high school in the second book of her acclaimed series of frank, insightful, and painfully honest autobiographical graphic novels. Written during the summer following her junior year at Berkeley High School in California,
Potential recounts Ariel's first real relationship and first-time love with a girl, her quest to lose her virginity to a boy, and her parents' divorce -- as well as the personal and social complications of writing about her life as she lives it. Along the way she hangs out with her favorite teacher, obsesses over clothes, gets drunk, smokes pot, and tries to connect the biology she reads about in textbooks with the biology she's living.
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Best One - Cyn E. Clarfield Esq - Seattle, WA
In my opinion, POTENTIAL is the best of all four books. Maybe I'm biased because I read it whilst coming out and it instilled a sense of confidence that really helped me get laid. Or maybe because it's fun and personal. It's got enough high school drama to be interesting, but not enough to become REAL high school drama (the kind you can't even relate to anymore). In fact, POTENTIAL is extremely easy to relate to, even now. So, basically, the reason is not important. It's just really good at making you feel re-attached to some part of you that you left behind.
Jul 04, 2010 22:48:07
