Potential: 09/08/15

Potential by Ariel Schrag is a graphic memoir of the author's sexual awakening in ninth grade. Her high school comics were originally released the year after the year covered.

The school year is a string of different relationships, hoping to find that ONE that would help her define herself, her true "potential." But it doesn't go well for her. There's a lot of partying and skipping school and other idiotic teenage stuff.

I normally enjoy this type of graphic novel &mdash a school aged memoir by a woman. But this one never grabbed hold of me. Part of it was the emphasis on sex, smoking, and skipping school. While I certainly had crushes in 9th grade I wasn't living my day to day on the goal of getting some! Basically, she paints herself as very one sided so that her only personality traits are young, sex obessed lesbian. YAWN.

Finally there's the artwork. OK, I get that she was young when she drew these. But there's just not enough there to distinguish between the many different characters. The artwork here was more a distraction than a benefit to the memoir.

Two stars

Comments (0)