Potential

High School Comic Chronicles

by Ariel Schrag

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.

Genres: Graphic Novels, Comics, Queer, LGBT, Memoir, Graphic Novels Comics, Nonfiction

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Ariel Schrag was born in Berkeley, California. She is the author of the novel Adam, and the graphic memoirs Awkward, Definition, Potential, Likewise, and Part of It. Potential was nominated for an Eisner Award and Likewise was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award.

Adam was made into a feature film directed by Rhys Ernst and produced by James Schamus’s Symbolic Exchange. Schrag wrote the screenplay. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and won the Grand Jury Prize at the Mezipatra Queer Film Festival, a Grand Jury Award for Outstanding Directing at Los Angeles Outfest, and was nominated for a GLAAD award for Outstanding Film -- Limited Release.

Schrag was a writer for the USA series Dare Me, based on the Megan Abbott novel, the HBO series Vinyl and How To Make It In America, and for the Showtime series The L Word.

She has written comics and articles for The New York Times Book Review, Cosmopolitan, New York Magazine, USA Today, and more. Her original art has showed in galleries across North America and Europe.

Schrag graduated from Columbia University with a degree in English Literature. She teaches the course Graphic Novel Workshop in the writing department at The New School and has also taught classes at Brown University, New York University, Butler University, and Williams College.

She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Reviews

[Rod Brown · Rating 2 out of 5]

#ThrowbackThursday - Back in the '90s, I used to write comic book reviews for the website of a now-defunct comic book retailer called Rockem Sockem Comics. (Collect them all!)

From the November 1998 edition with a theme of "Women in the Comics":

INTRODUCTION

This month's column reflects on the depiction of women in the comics. From the selections below, you'd have to generalize that women are either whup-ass, big-breasted superheroes and villains or confused bisexuals.

Yeah.

I'm sure these stereotypes are going to bring in that mainstream female audience the comics industry has always wanted . . .

But, hey, I review what is produced, not what should exist. And some of these comics ain't half bad.

FROM THE BACKLIST

POTENTIAL #1-3 (Slave Labor Graphics)
DEFINITION (Slave Labor Graphics)

Potential.

Rarely has the title of a book been more fitting. POTENTIAL is packed with potential. It's got a long way to go, but this book has the potential to be the launching pad for a highly promising new talent in the comics field.

POTENTIAL and DEFINITION are the semi-autobiographical comics of writer/artist Ariel Schrag. In POTENTIAL, Schrag chronicles her 16th birthday and her Junior year of high school. It's the sequel to her graphic novel, DEFINITION, which tells the story of her sophomore year of high school.

In DEFINITION, Schrag (the creator) lets the reader into the world of an amazing high school adolescent and her varied obsessions. Ariel (the character) follows and emulates her favorite rock star, Gwen Stefani of the band No Doubt. ("Definition angel.") She lives for the orderly world of her Advanced Placement Chemistry class. ("Definition clean and pure.") She revels in a favorite phrase shared with her friends. (Definition definition.) And she struggles with her own sexual identity as she tries to choose between bisexuality and lesbianism. (Definition nudity and sexual content make this book inappropriate for children.)

Having spent her Sophomore defining the world around her, Ariel spends her Junior year seeking the potential that exists in everyday life. POTENTIAL #1 starts Ariel's year off with a downer as her month-old same-sex relationship falls apart. But life picks up for Ariel as she gets involved with her best friend's sister in #2. In #3, Ariel decides she must lose her virginity before her 17th birthday with the help of an old boyfriend. Even when events go awry, Ariel's youthful optimism -- her ability to see the good potential in things -- carries her through.

I want to discount the grade I'm giving Schrag's work below. In grading what has made it's way onto paper, I can only give POTENTIAL and DEFINITION a C- but these books are drawn with the wild abandon that makes me want to whip out the old "A for effort" cliche. The art is far from professional but I can see it evolving every issue as Ariel Schrag experiments with different styles and techniques. She started out with cutesy, large-eyed and small bodied dwarfs but she's slowly developing a more realistic approach that is more personal and distinctive. Her writing is frantically paced and barrels headlong through long run-on sentences but she perfectly captures and encapsulates the excitement of being a teenage girl. The happenings in Schrag's stories may seem trivial or inconsequential but the effect they have on Ariel is obviously huge.

If you check out POTENTIAL and DEFINITION, I'm sure you'll see the same budding talent that I perceive. Remind yourself that the first dozen issues of CEREBUS, for instance, looked pretty crappy and read even worse, and think of the heights it has reached.

Ariel Schrag. Definition potential.

Grade: C-

[Q · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay, so I have some reservations about giving a book five stars when it contains a lot of fatphobia, butchphobia and coercive sex scenes. But it deals with all of that really honestly and bravely and I think it would be less realistic without it. It's an autobiographical comic written when the author/artist was actually 16-17 and I had some similar attitudes when I was that age. I did get a little bored, annoyed and frustrated with the last third or so where -- spoiler alert! -- the narrator-protagonist is just like "woe, my girlfriend doesn't want to have sex with me" forever but at the same time I get it and I really like the last page.

I feel like this book both captures that teenage moment of constant anticipation and "potential" perfectly but without being naff or overly nostalgic to read when you're older (well, I'm in my mid 20s so I guess being seventeen wasn't that long ago, but still). I probably still have much of the same angst now about relationships and identity and who's more queer/what's queer here etc.

The art is beautiful, especially the contrast in styles between the regular panels and the dream/though panels. At the same time it's simple enough not to distract from the story which can be a problem for me in some graphic novels where the panels are too busy and I lose track of what's happening. I mean, I guess there's a lot of ways to structure graphic novel narrative and if it's a less linear story with a lot of full page illustrations then that can also work but personally I'm really into the traditional strip format. I can't believe how young the author was, why wasn't I writing stuff like this in high school?!

Comparisons to Alison Bechdel are inevitable and Bechdel provides the quote on the cover. While this is really hilarious in parts, in general I would say Potential is more moving and introspective and less funny than most of The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For. I liked it heaps more than Skim, which is another teen lesbian graphic novel classic. The mood is maybe similar to Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic but it's more sequential, definitely feels like a strip while Fun Home is very much crafted like a novel.

[Patricia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is by far my favorite volume of Ariel Schrag's autobiographical high school comic chronicles, which she wrote as a teenager, releasing each volume the year after the events it describes. While Definition, the sophomore year volume, is a light read that lacks substance, and Likewise, the senior year volume, becomes weighed down by its own literary pretensions, Potential manages to strike a satisfying balance between stylistic experimentation and narrative.

The bulk of the story deals with Ariel's year-long relationship with first love Sally, who may or may not actually be straight. Some of their interactions are truly wrenching, and I really felt for Ariel in way that I didn't in other volumes of the series--Schrag captures the awkward insecurity of being a teenager pitch-perfectly here, and manages to successfully interweave the many preoccupations of high school (family, classes, substance experimentation, sexual experimentation, shifting social groups) without making the graphic novel feel overcrowded or disjointed, as Likewise does.

An interesting sidenote: Schrag grew up in Berkeley, and it seems as though she not only had a queer community at her high school, but that almost all the girls that she was friends with were also queer, or at least bi-curious. Ariel and Sally even have a conversation about who in their school is a "real" lesbian and who's just faking it. My high school certainly didn't have this relationship to queerness... I wonder how many actually do?

Ultimately, Potential could stand alone as a self-contained work, and of Schrag's high school chronicles, I would probably recommend only this volume to other graphic novel fans.

[Hannah Garden · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this, it's hard not to feel flabbergasted by the fact that it was created by a teenager. Potential is Ariel Schrag's memoir of her junior year in high school, and it's brilliant enough to make you pretty frukken antsy to get your paws on the follow-up material; it's also derfy and seventeen-y enough to make you be like meh I will probly read the earlier stuff but not right now.
She does these little dream sequences where the way she draws the expressions on people's faces makes you just want to . . . I don't even know, but that eeky creepy feeling where you just love something SO MUCH that the corners of your eyeballs itch a little and it feels like the nerves in your feet are too sensitive to bear the earth? They are really really REALLY good looking, these drawings.
She's exactly the same age as me, too, and I've been having this long year of mourning over what a buttfuckery I've made of my life, so it's pretty I donno like poignant or something to see a life's thread that didn't just unravel entirely. I am full of I-wish-I's these days, and I wish I had been less interested in blackouts and more interested in pursuing art when I was a teenager. It's cool to see what it looks like, when someone does it. It looks really good.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ariel Schrag's compiled comic journal of her junior year in high school and her coming out story. I'm glad it exists as a model for other kids to do it, and as a record for teachers and parents. It's very uneven in the way a kind of (even edited) journal can be, in terms of the art and insight and narrative. It's pretty entertaining in places, for sure, but I like the idea of it more than the actual book.

[MariNaomi · Rating 4 out of 5]

At first, I had some difficulty getting over this book's art styles and shifts (sometimes it's sloppy with no purpose, sometimes it's amazing and beautiful, and sometimes it's amazing and beautiful in its deft use of sloppiness), but the story quickly swept me away, and by the end of the book the author seemed to have a better handle on her use of artistic technique as a storytelling tool. The story was sweet and aching, pinpointing precisely the anguish of being in an uneven relationship (particularly at a young age, although honestly, it never feels good to be on the yearning side of an imbalanced relationship). What especially got to me was watching her having meltdowns as her girlfriend pulled away--something we (or many of us) can't help but doing, even though we logically know it's just making things worse. Heartbreaking.

The only problem I found with the storytelling was the constant repetition of the word "potential," which would sometimes show up multiple times per page. It's the kind of storytelling technique that you discover in high school and think is the bomb, but when you read it again later you cringe at its lack of subtlety. But since the author actually wrote it in high school, I tried to be forgiving.

All in all, it was a good book (exceptional, considering the age of the author at the time of its creation), and I look forward to reading more of her work.

[A.K. · Rating 2 out of 5]

The art pushed this down to 3 stars. It probably would have taken a year longer to finish had Schrag illustrated the entire comic as she did her dream sequences, and I suppose that the contrast of their detailed emotional reality with the more cartoonishly and cutely drawn images from her waking life could be a narrative device. But I liked the look of them best, and just wished it all looked that good.

The title of the comic itself is an operative word for Schrag as she somehow gets through her junior year. Days start with it, and days are good or bad depending on if it is drained or not, and it has a lot to do with girls and their bodies but not everything. Not everything at all. Young Ariel's neurotic tendencies, down to her obsession with "balancing" her clothes, remind me very much of myself at that age. Her yearning, her coping, her confusion, her shitty relationships, her immaturity and her sometimes clarity all ring painfully true. I laughed out loud, I cringed, I wished that I had recorded my high school years thusly and I thanked myself that I didn't.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really do cherish this book, even after watching Schrag go on national television and admit that she made the whole thing up. Maybe I just feel bad for her after watching Oprah tear her a new one.... but honestly, what kind of state is the book industry in, that talented comic book writers feel they must pose as gay teenagers in order to get published??? Well, those revelations when Killer Films took her to court sure explained a lot about Schrag's mental state at the time. Sometimes the line between creative genius and confused madness seems so wispily slim....

However, I for one don't care a bit! Whether it's true or not, this is one of my favorite books of all time. I especially like the illustrations. They remind me of my own high school experiences, including a few I would rather forget.

[J. Gonzalez- Blitz · Rating 1 out of 5]

Too one sided, possibly not enough time given to reflect on events before chronicling them. Also, I'd love to get some of Ariel's girlfriends' side of the story--it seems she portrays everyone she dates as mean or unreasonable, while she's always the victim.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes the best way to tell how much I've enjoyed a book is to examine the spine. A quick glance at my bookshelf reveals that my copy of Ariel Schrag's Potential is cracked in about twenty-three different places.

I'm a huge fan of this book. It may be because it's one of the first truly alternative comic books that did anything for me. It may be the fact that I knew Schrag put this book together while she was still in high school. It may be the way that it tackles GLBT issues without stumbling into a series of adolescent storytelling clichés. Whatever it is, I've loved reading it again and again over the years.

I do cringe a bit when I hear people say that the book is, "pretty good for a sixteen year old." In my opinion, Schrag examines her own life with an honest clarity that most adult memoirs wish they could achieve. The art itself is expressive and wonderful. To someone reading alternative comics for the first time, it may appear a bit slapped together. But as the book progresses, it's easy to see that the artist is quite sure of herself and the rudimentary style works to enhance the story. Throughout the novel, Schrag deals with interpersonal relationships and sexually explicit material with the grace of a seasoned storyteller. She convincingly portrays the dual intensity and painful awkwardness of high school romance. A very engaging read.

Also, keep an eye out for Potential's predecessor, Definition. While it does manage to be a quick and entertaining read, it lacks a bit of the emotional depth achieved in the Shrag's later work. Still, it’s worth finding a copy if only to get a glimpse of her sophomore year. I very much look forward to reading Likewise, the chronicle of her senior year, when it is eventually collected and released.

[Stewart Tame · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have to say that I don't remember this much sturm und drang from my high school days. Of course I went to a much smaller high school, among other differences. I confess that I've been reading this series backwards. The first Ariel Schrag book I read was Likewise, which covers her senior year. Potential deals with the junior year. Of the two, I like Potential better. There seems to be more focus, more of a storyline, though that's really more to do with Ariel's life than any failing on her part as a comics artist. When you write autobiography, you're rather limited as far as source material goes, and sometimes life doesn't hand out coherent stories. I'm in awe of Schrag's talent as a storyteller. She has a telling eye for detail. I didn't keep a diary or anything during high school, but from the limited things I can remember--as I write this, my 30 year high school reunion is coming up next year--she's got a lot of it right, the highs and lows, and the swiftness of going from friends to lovers to enemies to friends again, it all rings true. The way she shifts to a more realistic drawing style for the dream sequences is a nice touch. Even if her high school experience doesn't exactly mirror your own (I personally never had to deal with the question of my sexual orientation, for instance), there's a lot of universal emotion and common experience at work here. This is an excellent book!

[Emilia P · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hm. Well of course my zeal for these books with expire just as I purchased the final two. Potential is about Schrag's junior year, where, honestly, I think her transition to straight-up-gay is a little oversimplified. "And then I broke up with my boyfriend and that was totally easy!" But then being gay is not as awesome as she expected it to be which I think was probably the best thing about this book -- defining your sexuality one way or another doesn't make life easier. Kids get sad and feel things way too deeply and get each other embroiled in it in high school, staring at each other, falling apart into nothingness, and this book was about that way more than the joyful chaos of the first few books... and oh the art is getting both more varied and more controlled. It's nice how it changes from year to year.

Less Julia, less school, more intense focus on a few mopey characters. Also a little too much "I have a comic book" self-conciousness.
All that said, I still I identify alot with Schrag and am glad for her self-documentary sense and maybe someday I can own the whole series. I wonder if senior year will see a resolution.

Ah P.S. her dislike of fat butch dykes totally lost her points with me. I guess this is a personal beef, but she seemed to be putting some of her own issues on them, which was lame. The end!

[Ruth · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was my second birthday-present-to-myself comic. It's also of the queer coming of age genre, but it's autobigraphical and much more complicated. In the beginning I quickly figured out that the narrator went to some high school where it was really hip to be a lesbian which is cool, but then she just seemed to always be either getting drunk and hooking up (or trying to hook up) and frenetically studying biology and math and I just didn't get it. But I plugged through it and there are some human moments in there, mostly when she goes through the process of slowly realizing that her girlfriend is losing interest in her... I really felt her teenaged pain. The other thing I liked was the way the dream sequences are drawn super-realistically, unlike the rest of the comic, and also how when people were drunk their words came out all wiggly.

[Peacegal · Rating 2 out of 5]

While this graphic novel will probably be cherished by gay teens coming to terms with their sexuality, I just couldn’t relate. And it’s just not because I’m not gay; it’s because the vast majority of the storyline centered on the protagonist’s high school relationships and teenage sexual awkwardness. Seeing as I didn’t even go out on a single date in high school, I just couldn’t get into this one.

[Richard Van Camp · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. I think Ariel's honesty saves lives. Thank you, Ariel, for your bravery and courage in creating this gorgeous narrative. I've bought so many copies that I end up giving away to people searching for answers about their sexuality. I'm about to buy two more and they're already marked for friends I care so deeply about. I love it.

[Tammy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ugh, high school. Drawn with conviction by a survivor. It's hard to imagine that Schrag completed each of these graphic novels the summer after the year each one depicts. They just keep getting better (and more painful). Well done, Ariel.

[Samantha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Is this the one with that lovely Maddy character? Coulda done with more of her. Otherwise it was pretty awesome and gay.

[Alison · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a really lovely graphic novel about high school. Ah, the drama.

[Stef · Rating 1 out of 5]

I abandoned this early on. The constant hammer-over-the-head overuse of the word POTENTIAL came across as clumsy and repetitive instead of artful and drowned out the actual story.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Potential is a comic diary of Ariel's high school Junior year in 1997. She's a punk rock baby dyke in the Bay Area.

She goes to shows at Gillman and has a hard time sorting out her social life and falls in love with an emotionally unavailable bisexual woman at the same time her parents are getting a divorce and she's trying to get all As in her classes.

When people talk about wondering what it was like to live in a world without cell phones, they should read this book. It was stressful. There was a lot of miscommunication and waiting around for phone calls and wondering if and when someone would call. But there were also sweet moments where she shared her notes she wrote with classmates.

Her drawing style was amazing, especially for someone so young. I especially liked the dream sequences, where she drew in more realistic style, and the drunk and high sequences where she drew everything a bit crooked.

I I probably should have not read this book, it was very hard to go through high school again.

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was just ok to me. I wasn’t a fan of the repeated use of the r-word or some of the treatment queer communities receive. I understand this is a graphic memoir of the author’s time in high school in the 90’s, where these behaviors were normalized even by other queer people, but I wasn’t expecting it and it’s just not my personal jam. I also found the art really distracting at times and the pages too crowded to tell what was happening in the story. The only times this is a benefit is when Ariel is going through anxiety attacks or when any of the people are intoxicated. Then the art treatment actually works really well. Overall, just not my thing I guess.

[Rachel Drrmrmrr · Rating 4 out of 5]

The fact that this was written by a teenager is pretty fucking wild to me. Ariel Schrag had a pretty solid handle on stylization and narrative flow with this, and I'm interested in reading her later works.

[A. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book had more gay drama than I did in my four years at a historically women's college, which I think says a lot about the tumultuous Fantastic documentation of queer life as a high school student. Very relatable, fun and readable.

[Jae · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was so raw in ways that were a little off putting but also amazing because that's what being a teenager is like and that's what you get when a teenager writes about their own teenage life.

[Sohum · Rating 4 out of 5]

i read this instead of studying for finals and i thought it was better than Awkward and about as good as Definition.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

It feels like a "most improved" award is due to the author with the growth of her writing and drawing.

[Tiffany · Rating 2 out of 5]

This autobiographical comic documents tumultuous teenage relationships in all their glory.

[Caitlin Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

Did people really think about sex this much in high school

[Robyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cathartic. Sometimes stuff that’s grounds for an exorcism is just high school.

[Korynn · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Potential" drags the reader back to high school, which this clever autobiographer notes all her experiences at Berkeley High and regurgitates them into cartoon format, and then, earning my great admiration proceeded to elect a theme of "Potential" that runs throughout the stories of her life, like Sesame Street's word of the day (or in this case, junior year). Painfully honest, the author apparently found herself in the typical identity struggle/crisis of the teen years which is drawn in detail in this book. It features the personal realization of the author's homosexuality and ensuing relationships and entanglements. It also details the (extremely boring to me) typical escapades of the teen: drinking loads of alcohol to excess whenever possible, never missing a chance for smoking pot or making out, having relationships for the sake of just being in a relationship, participating in the supposed rite of passage that is junior prom, and the strange myth that one must lose one's virginity to a member of the opposite sex by 17. Just for the sake of losing one's virginity. Not for pleasure or anything like that. But those aren't the fault of the book, that's just the way one 17-year old thought at the time. The art varies highly - it can be very cartoony and exaggerated and differs depending on when it was drawn. And then there's the splices of amazingly detailed realistic dream sequences...An interesting work, but deeply personal.