Awkward and Definition

The cover of Awkward and Definition

The comics medium is unusually suited to the memoir form, as anyone familiar with alternative comics could easily attest. Part of what sets Awkward and Definition by Ariel Schrag apart from other memoir comics is the immediacy of the storytelling. Even reading these volumes years later, it feels as if one is peering into Ms. Schrag’s life as it unfolds in real time. She wrote Awkward and Definition while still attending Berkeley High School in California and they chronicle her freshman and sophomore years, respectively. She self-published them, and originally sold them to friends and family before the first volume was picked up by Slave Labor Graphics. Her burgeoning sexuality is only one of many subplots of both volumes, now available in one book from Simon & Schuster, as she realizes what's important to her in life and art.

Ms. Schrag displays a level of precociousness and self-awareness in this early writing that leaves no doubt about why she is a major talent. Her descriptions of certain adolescent milestones reach poetic heights, such as when she first kisses a major crush. “It was as if suddenly everything about kissing made sense and all those other awful bland boring kisses I’d had vanished away with unimportance and insignificance all the doubts and wonders about kissing thrust aside with a laugh because now I knew, it seemed like it lasted for hours and hours as I treasured every second taking in everything, every move of her tongue, every clank of her tongue pierce [sic] against my teeth, every press of her fingertips against my neck as my mind repeated over and over what was happening I can’t believe this is happening.” The smaller details on which she focuses allow this to be individual even as the feelings being described are universal.

The artwork is a perfect complement to such prose, with lines that alternate between sharp and loose according to the mindset of the protagonist. She presents her emotional states so evocatively at times that no words are needed. The way her eyes light up when seeing a friend, or how her whole body melts in despair over heartbreak or a difficult chemistry test, are drawn with the intensity of the raw emotions that were clearly present when these events occurred.

Awkward and Definition was selected for the American Library Association Rainbow List in 2009. Alison Bechdel called them an “autobiographical triumph.” They are available through Amazon, the publisher’s website, Barnes & Noble, and should really be available wherever books are sold.