Manor Threat: Snakepit Comics 2013-2015

Description

Ben Snakepit's latest collection of daily diary comics takes place in the town of Manor, a suburb of Austin, Texas. Ben buys a house with his wife and adjusts to slow-paced country living. He also turns 40 and gets a new job, and then gets another job. Along the way, every day without fail, he draws a three-panel comic describing the day's events. Against that steady march of time, patterns emerge and shift and the result is a meditative, addictive read that captures the humanity of everyday life.

Ben Snakepit has been drawing a daily diary comic for fifteen years. He also publishes a regular column in Razorcake magazine and appears in a number of multi-artist anthology comics. His books have received glowing reviews in publications like Vice, Maximum Rocknroll, Wizard magazine, USA Today and GQ. He lives in Manor, Texas, outside of Austin.

Praise for Manor Threat: "I hate about 80% of all comics. Narrow that down into the genre of autobio, and even further into the subgenre of indie punk rock stuff, and it's bleak as hell. But somehow, Ben Snakepit's work has managed to consistently win me over for more than a decade. He doesn't cater to literary trends, or try to make Snakepit more than what it is, which is a difficult and wonderful thing to pull off. I suspect that even when I'm old and hate even more things, Snakepit will forever have a place in my cold, shitty heart." --Julia Wertz, Fart Party creator, New Yorker cartoonist Praise for the Snake Pit series "Ben's shitty comics have created a book that's impossible to put down, with lessons usually reserved for more pretentious art" -Vice Each three-panel strip in this collection covers the events of the day, and is accompanied by one of Snakepit's favorite bands and a track he likes by them. The drawings are simple--both funny and sweet--filled with Snakepit's humor, and his quirky visual interpretations of the events of his day-to day life. His willingness to confront the mundane and his diligence in keeping a daily journal are admirable, especially in an age when people's attention spans are short, and most ignore the unremarkable aspects of life. --Publishers Weekly "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 is the visual embodiment of DIY punk as it unfolds in its three panels, a day at a time. Much like life itself, on the surface--and to the casual observer--none of this may look like much. Ben sits around, eats buffets, gets high, plays in bands, and works at a video store. Each of Ben's days has an accompanying soundtrack song. Music's definitely important to Ben, but the true driving force is the people he meets; what beats in his friends' hearts, and not merely what's on their t-shirts. Pushing around all the edges, like pieces of paper cut out and carefully rubber cemented into place, are real snapshots of life-as-it's-happening. And when the watershed days do come, they resonate even deeper. -Razorcake 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 Snake Pit an existential text. -Jimmi Payne's Punk Zine If Jack Kerouac listened to The Marked Men and Toys That Kill, became a cartoonist and had decided to reduce all accounts of his daily life to 3 panels per 24 hours over the course of several years, he still wouldn't have created a more consistently engaging, entertaining and shit-your-pants funny series of books than Ben Snakepit has. And that's a fact. --Chynna Clugsten, Blue Monday Ben Snakepit draws stories about love, punk, Texas, forties, infatuation, dragons, diarrhea, and more with a thoughtful truthfulness that many other authors may be unable to handle. Alongside entertaining and enlightening, Ben is honest about weakness, vulnerability, girls, bands and dirty habits- unlike many suave authors who disguise imperfection with big words. Ben keeps it real and shows no means of pretension. --Cristy Road, Spit and Passion and Bad Habits