Customer Reviews

Potential: The High School Comic Chronicles of Ariel Schrag (High School Chronicles of Ariel Schrag)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Ariel Schrag's work, POTENTIAL, is a must-read for anybody who has ever been to high school. She tells it how it is - from losing her virginity to smearing goat excrement on a boy's face to endear herself to her girlfriend. Absolutely amazing; if you've ever loved Harriet the spy's adventures, this is for you - in this 200-page tome, Ariel gives the upper East side's favorite young spy a run for her money; Ariel's stories are all true, and told with scientific precision.

Ariel's work is beautiful and compelling. Her high school coming-of-age story is so personal, so awkward, so terrible, and still so delirious with potential... you'll recognize it immediately. Five stars.

Rarely do i like comic books, yet Potential is in a category all its own. Not only is it humorous and witty but it also a personal and real account of ariel schrags junior year of high school. queer youth can definitely relate to this book. A book i would highly recommend but be warned that it is rather addicting.

Anyone who's dealt with the joy and pain of a high school relationship will love this book (straight or gay.) The thoughts and actions ring so true. I'd forgetten what it was all like until I read this. I was continuously amazed that the author was so young given how insightful it was about relationships. I don't think many high schoolers have the ability to look at themselves so clearly (I know I didn't.) The writing is great and the storyline is engaging, but the drawing really makes it. This is the kind of book that I want to lend to people and tell them "you MUST read this!"

I have to admit, the style of artwork put me off this book the first times I picked it up. Then I found it at discount and figured, "what the heck?" Well, I had the same initial response to Dilbert and was wrong about that, too.

This second of three high school diaries, all in graphic-novel form, gives a realistically gritty idea of what teens go through when finding an identity, losing a virginity, and generally riding the emotional and hormonal roller coaster of mid-teen years. In Schrag's case, there was the additional pressure of being a girl who liked girls, mitigated by a relatively tolerant California environment in which to establish herself. (That just made it even more annoying to need a boy for that virginity thing. I found the 'SHOVE' moment wonderfully exressive.) Then there's the self-referential aspect of the writing of this comic appearing during the story that it tells.

The visual style comes across a bit raw and ragged, but that seems emotionally true to Schrag's raw and ragged experience of her world. A few dream sequences appear in an ironically realistic style - in fact, even her daydreams seem more realistic than her reality.

If you expect "a day in the life" to make sense, then you probably have slim experience of either teens or girls. But, if you're willing to hang on through the ups and downs, it's a worthwhile ride.

-- wiredweird

"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

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.

This title couldn't have portrayed my own life in a more realistic fashion. Ariel Schrag is an absolute genius!

Having gone to high school with Ariel, and personally knowing a lot of people in her books, I feel that they really disrespect the privacy of the parties involved. It really leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

I bought this book as a gift. It wasn't clear from the reviews that it was not a "book" but a comic book. However, the biggest problem was that it was a book about a young girl's lesbian experience in high school! (Not that there is anything wrong with that. I just wish that I had known that fact before I purchased the "book.")