The Snakepit Book: (Snakepit)

Ben "Snakepit" White draws his life every day in three comic panels. This book collects the years 2001-2003 and follows his participation in the heavy metal band, the Sword, up to the invitation to join the punk rock band J Church. His punk-influenced comic memoirs focus on every day, no matter how uneventful, in order to find the deeper meaning in the seemingly mundane. It is one of the few unintentional and revealing cultural studies of punk rock lifestyles. As Jimmi Payne summarizes in "Punk Zine," "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."

About the Author :
Ben Snakepit is a freelance artist and author of the zines "Going 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.

Review :
"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