Since Ariel Schrag’s Awkward—about her freshman year at Berkeley High
School— and Definition—about her sophomore year—were first
published in 1995 and 1996, Schrag has become something of
a celebrity. The comics were first self-published, and sold
within her high school, after which they were picked up and
issued by Slave Labor Graphics, a house open to young
talent that has published now-famous work like Dork by Evan
Dorkin and Johnny the Homicidal Maniac by Jhonen Vasquez.
Schrag had one title for each year of high school:
following Awkward and Definition were Potential and Likewise. After Berkeley High, Schrag attended
Columbia as a literature major, and the year following her
graduation she began teaching a graphic novel workshop at
the New School and was the subject of a documentary film
titled Confession:
A Film About Ariel Schrag (which aired on PBS, among other venues).
Schrag, while still in her early twenties, then became a
writer for the enormously successful television show
The L
Word, which
tracks the lives of a group of lesbian friends in LA. She
stayed for two seasons (good ones, too!). Most recently,
she wrote the screen adaptation to her book
Potential—also re-released by Touchstone this
year—which is being developed into a major motion picture
(live-action, with some animation) by Killer Films (also
behind Boys Don’t
Cry and
I’m Not
There).
Potential
has also been adapted—a few
episodes, at least—into a video-comic on the website
www.ourchart.com.
Phew!
But what she likes best, she says, is comics. “I like
eating and sleeping and all of the natural pleasures of
life—like sex—and playing with our dog, but really, there’s
nothing quite like it,” she says of drawing comics, in a
profile on ourchart. As someone who has been following her
work since the 90s, it’s no surprise that major entities
like Showtime and Touchstone (and Hollywood film) are eager
to snap Schrag up. She’s savvy and funny. Although
Awkward—bundled together with
Definition
in Touchstone’s reprint—isn’t
what your average comics fan might consider highly
accomplished, it brims with charm, both in the rounded,
cartoony visuals, and in the texture of the story. I find
it mesmerizing. Schrag, even at age 15, is a cartoonist
whose ear for language and details and anecdotes surpasses
many more established writers. Her drawing may not be
“good” in Awkward—it’s not even as “good” in a technical
sense as her senior-year comic; but it’s curiously
enticing.
Awkward begins on a deceptively heavy note. The
tone of Schrag’s book is one of its most interesting
aspects. In Definition, she attends the Alternative Press Expo
to promote Awkward; as readers leaf through the comic, a
thought balloon reveals her hoping, “Please laugh, please
laugh, please laugh.” There are plenty of truly amusing
moments; I laughed out loud. But there are also serious
themes threading through the book. Schrag—who later in high
school comes out as gay—opens Awkward with that unsurprising 9th grade thing: a
mega crush on a boy, Roy. This boy wears a t-shirt of the
feminist band L7 (“Smell the Magic,” it proclaims, as
someone’s head is lifted up to sniff a woman’s crotch), has
long black hair, carries his disaffection openly. Page 1:
“He was so good and he looked so good. He’s mine.” Page 2:
they become friends and go jogging together until…. Page 3:
Ariel on phone with best friend Julia, sobbing
hysterically: “It’s Roy, he was beat up today, oh it’s SO
HORRIBLE!.... I heard that some guys jumped him in the
locker room and called him a long-haired faggot AAARRGGGHH
and then they.. THEY BROKE HIS LEG snapped it right in
half!” This event carries a lot of brutality; even so early
into the book it comes as a slowing-down moment. And then
page 4: Ariel is excited about going to a Nine Inch Nails
show. This is what high school is really like, and there’s
no self-consciousness on Schrag’s part as author, even as
the self-consciousness of her character becomes one of the
book’s consistent themes. (Speaking of shows: the music
tastes of Ariel and her peers is a big part of the book,
and a fascinating one: an informal tally of music mentioned
in this collection includes the Misfits, Marilyn Manson,
Soundgarden, Minor Threat, P.I.L., the Doors, Tracy
Chapman, Alice in Chains, Hole, Danzig, Korn, Lemonheads, 4
Non Blondes, Sonic Youth, Counting Crows, Bikini Kill, Redd
Kross, Rancid, Pennywise, Belly, Primus, No Doubt, The
Cramps, Juliana Hatfield, the Violent Femmes.
Awkward
and Definition offer a lot about what 90s youth culture
was like; it’s also sort of anthropologically interesting
to note the standards of “cool” for these Berkeley High
kids, who probably have a different high school experience,
at least on one level, than most.)
Awkward shows the cohort smoking pot, seeing
bands, nursing celebrity and high school obsessions (for
Ariel, it’s Juliette Lewis, and a boy named Michael), and
navigating the, yes, awkwardness of the fabric of high-school friendships
with both romantic and platonic intimates (Schrag is best,
here, at getting at the horror of being ditched by a
platonic female friend). And the ending of Awkward is
quietly sad: although the text itself doesn’t present it as
such, any reader might be apt to feel some dismay: Ariel
sees Roy again for the first time since the beating, on the
book’s last page. Gone are his black clothes. Gone is his
long black hair. He looks quiet and nondescript, wearing a
backpack and short hair; he’s blending in. Ariel runs up to
him and asks him, “You never wear your L7 t-shirt
anymore—will you sell it to me?” Roy says simply, “You can
have it,” and the last panel pictures Ariel wearing “Smell
the Magic” proudly. She’s happy, but there’s a sadness
here: the bullies, it seems, have won; he no longer wants
to code as rebellious, as “faggot.” She takes his t-shirt,
and, in the next installment, Definition, she starts taking up the “gay”
mantle—at least a little bit.
One link between Awkward and Definition has to do with tagging. In
Awkward, Ariel creates a word, “Denial,” in a
special font. “I’ve practiced piecing it a little. I like
doing characters,” she explains, and she goes out with
spray paint to give it a try on the side of a building.
Page 1 of Definition also features the word “denial”—screamed
at her, in fact, by an out lesbian named Alicia: “DENIAL!,”
Alicia crows. “Somebody’s in denial! There’s no way you are
completely straight! From 0-6 you are a 2-4-, I’m a 6!”
While Ariel denies it, by the time Alicia asks her at the
end of sophomore year, “Get with any fine girls recently?”
Ariel responds cheerfully, “I wish.” Definition, whose drawing is slightly more honed
than Awkward, presents the same mix of high school
obsessions. Part of the reason it’s easy to stick with
Ariel as a character is because she is, after all, so
well-roundedly unboring: there’s plenty of drunken fooling
around (some of which, with boys, is actually disturbing)
and fun-seeking (also disturbing: there are several
episodes of really high or really drunk girls getting
literally lost; in one, Schrag writes, “After walking by
numerous nightclubs and bars full of drunk rapists we found
a lone 22 bus stop…”[56]), but she also has a “delicious
obsession,” AP Chemistry (41), and she’s trying, really
hard, to get A’s in school, even as she struggles with
crushes on girls that swerve her focus.
In the end, you get the feeling that Schrag is not only a
compelling author, but her character is an admirably smart
kid: of her major sexual obsession, a twenty-year-old
face-pierced beauty named Rosary, she finally observes:
“While in some ways looking into her face could cause all
sorts of complications and obstructions in my mind it was
also just like staring into a blank cement wall. All the
uproar and thrill was always just my own creation. And as I
thought about it, what it really came down to was being
attracted to your own mind” (78). I wish I knew that when I
was 16. She also gets an A in Chemistry.
