Drawn out

GRAPHIC NATURE Schrag doesn’t edit out the dirty parts in her confessional comic book, Likewise.

The world of comic books has long been full of sapphic seduction, from Wonder Woman and her Amazonian origins, to Batwoman, who recently became DC Comics’ only gay superhero. Still, unless there’s a grappling hook in your back pocket, you may have a hard time relating to those ladies. Fortunately, the awkward, horny, down-to-earth dykes drawn by Ariel Schrag—whose latest graphic novel, Likewise, hits stores this week—are achingly familiar to just about any queer person who ever went to high school.

The final memoir follow-up to cult faves Awkward, Definition and Potential—the last of which is currently being developed into a major motion picture by Killer Films, to be directed by Rose Troche—Likewise picks up where the others left off, in Schrag’s final year of high school. That’s when she tries to make peace with her ex, meets her mom’s new boyfriend and hits up the library for a scientific explanation of what it means be gay.

She also examines what it means to chronicle a life while it’s still being lived. The artist draws herself recording events as they happen, using her journal, tape recorder and computer. And she’s less concerned with the situations she finds herself in than with how she will depict them as art. “It was almost like the actual, real experience ceased to matter,” says Schrag, 29, who divides her time between Fort Greene, Brooklyn, and L.A. “It was only the way I recorded it that mattered.”

Schrag’s journey to becoming a known and loved comic queen began while she was still in high school, when she wrote and self-published Awkward, photocopying it and selling it to friends for $5 a pop. She did the same thing with Definition, which, along with Potential, was eventually picked up by the small independent press Slave Labor Graphics.

Schrag wrote Likewise when she was just 18 but didn’t complete inking it until last year,to send out to publishers. She remembers its initial creation as a whirlwind that needed to happen. “It was definitely sort of a crazed state,” she says, recalling her frenzy of writing and drawing back when she was first living in New York, in a windowless basement in Brooklyn. “I wouldn’t leave the basement for days.”

She hasn’t chronicled her life since then in a similar fashion. “I would never write something like that now,” says the author, who has since graduated from Columbia University with a degree in literature. “I don’t have any desire to write confessional, explicitly graphic stuff like that anymore.”

Instead, she’s moved on to work that has included teaching graphic-novel writing at the New School, illustrating stories in publications such as Paper and The Village Voice and, most notoriously, writing episodes for seasons three and four of The L Word.

“When I was working on The L Word, I would go to this [club] called the Falcon where they would screen it,” Schrag recalls about her introduction to the L.A. dyke scene. “And the first time I went, I was like, Oh my God, it’s true! There were these really long-haired, femmey lesbians all over each other, wearing matching thousand-dollar rings. It was sort of fascinating.”

Schrag’s book work has captured the rapt attention of Alison Bechdel, of Dykes to Watch Out For and Fun Home fame.

“It’s amazing that she manages to be so self-absorbed and self-referential without being solipsistic,” says Bechdel, speaking on the phone from Vermont about Schrag’s work. The two met when Bechdel gave a talk in New York and Schrag approached afterward, offering chocolate chip cookies and requesting a meeting to talk about their work. Bechdel readily agreed, and since then, she says, the two have been learning from each other. “Her work comes from this really different, underground place,” Bechdel adds. “She’s the product of her era. Her sex stuff is so disturbing; it’s so intimate and revealing.”

It’s true that Schrag has never shied away from depicting raunchy moments, as her work is full of graphic sex and masturbation images. “At the time I was just like, Fuck everybody! The only thing that matters is art!” she recalls, laughing at her teenage gall. Still, she doesn’t see her openness as a big deal, even now. “It was Berkeley,” she says about her magical hometown. “Berkeley is not like other places. I didn’t grow up with homophobia, and there wasn’t a sense of shame about sexuality.”

Likewise (Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, $16) hits stores Tue 7.

Likewise, we're sure
Ariel Schrag provided us with a two-page preview of her newest book, set to hit stores on Tue 7

Get Likewise on Amazon.com | Buy it on BN.com