Likewise (The High School Comic Chronicles of Ariel Schrag #3)

by Ariel Schrag

Overview

Ariel Schrag concludes her turbulent ride through high school in the long-awaited final volume of her acclaimed series of compelling and strikingly honest autobiographical graphic novels.

Set in Berkeley, California, Likewise takes us into the holy grail of teenagers, every bit as terrifying as it is liberating: senior year. Struggling with a major longing for her ex-girlfriend who has gone away to college, her parents' post-divorce relationship, anxiety over the future, and all the graphic details of her complicated life, Ariel sets out to document everything and everyone. And when she discovers James Joyce, a whole new world of creativity opens up to her.

Written with unabashed honesty, insight, and humor, Likewise is a brave account of one teenage girl's search for truth.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781416552376
Publisher:	Gallery Books
Publication date:	04/07/2009
Series:	High School Comic Chronicles of Ariel Schrag Series , #3
Edition description:	Original
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	8.30(w) x 10.80(h) x 1.20(d)
Age Range:	17 - 18 Years

About the Author

Ariel Schrag is also the author of the autobiographical comic books Potential, which was nominated for an Eisner Award, and Likewise. She divides her time between Los Angeles and New York.

Editorial Reviews

"A scathing and meticulously documented autobiographical triumph." — Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home

"A big leap of artistic ambition and self-discovery; Schrag saved the best for last." — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"One of the great achievements of contemporary comics." — The Comics Journal

"By turns funny, raw, and self-indulgent, Schrag perfectly captures the growing pains of a precocious high school senior." — Publishers Weekly

"Beautifully illustrated...A fine denouement for Schrag's magnum opus, worthy of the attention of both Alison Bechdel and Michel Foucault fanciers." — Booklist

"Schrag is a fluid storyteller with a fine ear for dialogue. Her tales are thick with humor, wit, and optimism." — San Diego Union Tribune

From the Publisher

Third and final volume of the High School Comic Chronicles (Potential, 2008, etc.). The artist's senior year is full of profound changes, and it's no accident that the strip invokes Ulysses, Infinite Jest and The Brothers Karamazov. This installment has an epic scope and scale as it deals with everything transpiring in Schrag's life, mind and art while she prepares for the transition from high school to college. The complications inherent in this rite of passage are compounded by Schrag's unrequited-or less requited than she would like-love for Sally. Now a college student, Sally seems more hetero than bi, while Schrag alternately questions and embraces her own homosexuality. The breakup of her parents' marriage causes strained feelings toward both of them (not helped when Schrag's mother tries to bond with her over marijuana). She's excited when she's accepted at Barnard, but it also adds to her tension; she's having a hard enough time deciding who she is, and now she will have a new stage for self-invention. Schrag's art is strikingly transformed as well. The lettering veers from print to scrawl, and panels change from white to dark to gray, reflecting the emotional turmoil of a cartoonist who finds herself "thinking in double frame," simultaneously engaging with her life and the comic narrative it inspires. There's also a meta-comic dimension here, as the artist confesses to "all the lies" in her previous volumes and confuses dreams and fantasies (many of them masturbatory) with reality. Toward the end, some of her experiences become so fragmentary that chapters are only two panels long. A big leap of artistic ambition and self-discovery; Schrag saved the best for last.

Kirkus Reviews