Overview

By now you know the drill: Ben White draws his life everyday in 3 comic panels. This was his first book, collecting quite a few various zines. After describing dozens of various Snakepit titles I'm going to defer to the wisdom of Jimmi Payne's Punk Zine, ""Taken individually, each strip resembles what a friend would say if you asked what they had done that day. Ben sifts through the minutiae of life as well as the full experience of time in a day. This is different than James Kochalka's work as there is no pretense at narrative or point. The narratives in Snakepit open up on the macro level. If Snakepit is to be read on the toilet, a mere bowel movement is enough time to live months through the protagonist's eyes. Patterns emerge and story arcs materialize and years of common actions load into a highly concentrated snapshot that wakes you up to the ongoing machinations of life beyond your present day. This has led many to label Snakepit an existential text."" Introduction about doing cocaine by Aaron Cometbus.

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9781621067146

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Ben's shitty comics have created a book that's impossible to put down, with lessons usually reserved for more pretentious art. -- Vice Ben's comic is the visual embodiment of what I really enjoy about DIY punk. On the surface, and to the casual observer, it may not look like much. But there are the watershed days [...] It shows that, yeah, music's important to Ben, but it's driven by the people behind it all, what beats in their hearts, and not what's on their t-shirts. -- Razorcake Snakepit stands out for the foolishness of the protagonist's life. The endless punk rock shows, drinking binges, and rotating girlfriends makes life seem both utterly meaningless and yet still there's a power there . . . or at least an energy of some kind. A little crudely lived, but with gusto, and crudely recorded as little comic strips. --James Kochalka, Vermont Cartoonist Laureate Every three-panel daily entry has a song-and-artist slug (e.g., 'Beat on the Brat--Ramones') as epigram more than title and very often begins or ends at a rock show. [...] Perhaps Snakepit's life is in a rut, but he's basically happy, especially when he has a girlfriend, and what he records simultaneously with his own adventures is a bohemian, or lumpen bohemian, scene healthier and miles less pretentious than, say, Verlaine and Rimbaud's Parisian niche or the Beats' conclaves in Paris and San Francisco. --Ray Olson, Booklist

"""Ben's comic is the visual embodiment of what I really enjoy about DIY punk. On the surface, and to the casual observer, it may not look like much. But there are the watershed days [...] It shows that, yeah, music's important to Ben, but it's driven by the people behind it all, what beats in their hearts, and not what's on their t-shirts."" --""Razorcake"" ""Ben's shitty comics have created a book that's impossible to put down, with lessons usually reserved for more pretentious art."" --""Vice"" ""Every three-panel daily entry has a song-and-artist slug (e.g., 'Beat on the Brat--Ramones') as epigram more than title and very often begins or ends at a rock show. [...] Perhaps Snakepit's life is in a rut, but he's basically happy, especially when he has a girlfriend, and what he records simultaneously with his own adventures is a bohemian, or lumpen bohemian, scene healthier and miles less pretentious than, say, Verlaine and Rimbaud's Parisian niche or the Beats' conclaves in Paris and San Francisco."" --Ray Olson, ""Booklist "" ""Snakepit stands out for the foolishness of the protagonist's life. The endless punk rock shows, drinking binges, and rotating girlfriends makes life seem both utterly meaningless and yet still there's a power there . . . or at least an energy of some kind. A little crudely lived, but with gusto, and crudely recorded as little comic strips."" --James Kochalka, Vermont Cartoonist Laureate"

Every three-panel daily entry has a song-and-artist slug (e.g., 'Beat on the Brat--Ramones') as epigram more than title and very often begins or ends at a rock show. [...] Perhaps Snakepit's life is in a rut, but he's basically happy, especially when he has a girlfriend, and what he records simultaneously with his own adventures is a bohemian, or lumpen bohemian, scene healthier and miles less pretentious than, say, Verlaine and Rimbaud's Parisian niche or the Beats' conclaves in Paris and San Francisco. --Ray Olson, Booklist

Author Information

Ben Snakepit is a freelance artist and author of the zinesGoing to California, Pills, and Snakepit. He is also a bass player for the popular punk band J Church. He lives in Austin, Texas.Aaron Cometbus has been publishing the zine Cometbus since 1981. He has been a songwriter and drummer in Pinhead Gunpowder, Harbringer, Astrid Oto, and dozens of other punk bands. He lives in Brooklyn.

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