Besides breathing, what else have you done every single day for the last 23 years? In my case, shower? Nope. Talk to my mom? Probably not. Have a beer? No comment.
For Richmond cartoonist Ben Snakepit, the answer is easy — he’s drawn a comic about his life. Since Jan. 1, 2001, he’s drawn, at the time of writing this article, 8,512 three-panel autobiographical comics.
Snakepit is the first to admit the comics aren’t all nail-biting, drama-filled, coming-of-age tales of adventure and glory — though some of them are. The comics he draws are meant to be something more like a report or a diary, a chronicle of a life lived as Ben Snakepit. Style Weekly recently sat down to talk with him about his daily endeavor and learned that, like all good stories, it starts with a flaky drummer.
“I started the comic out of frustration with the band I was in at the time. I was living here in Richmond and playing in a band called the Ultimate Dragons. Our drummer was real flaky and we had a really big show at Twisters. You remember Twisters? [this Gen X writer does, in fact, remember Twisters] We sold it out,” he recalls. “Our pictures were on the cover of Punchline. Remember Punchline? [yup, used to write for the free alt-weekly in the ’90s] Well, he never showed up. I was so furious and frustrated. That night I was like, I’ve got to do something where I’m the only person in control and I don’t have to count on anyone else.”
More inspiration came to him at the Walden Books at Regency Square Mall.
“There was this book there called, ‘I Went to College, and It Was Okay’ by a guy just named Jim. It was very simply drawn [with comics] like: ‘Today I went to work and then I came home and watched TV’ and that’s it. My mind was blown at how great this thing was. I finally got around to googling it and found out Jim was fictional and the guy [Scott Dikkers, co-founder of The Onion] made it all up. I was so bummed. But this light bulb goes off.”
Snakepit decided on New Year’s Day 2001 to draw a comic every day for the rest of his life. He titles each strip with a different song (that’s over 8,000 songs) and the date. “I do the previous day first thing in the morning,” he tells me. “Because you never know if something cool is going to happen in the middle of the night.”
In the early days, he published them as zines he made at Kinko’s and mailed them out to Maximum Rocknroll, Razorcake, and Punk Planet to get reviewed. Eventually, Razorcake wanted to publish a collection of his first three years. Since then, he’s published eight more volumes with Microcosm Publishing and, most recently, the indie, punk publisher Silver Sprocket.
Relationship building, creating space for yourself and others, making your own rules about production and distribution — these are punk rock values Snakepit identifies with. “It started as a zine, and I feel like zines and punk rock are absolutely integral to one another. I’ve always felt very connected to DIY. The other kind of punk comparison is something I call Ramones-ing it, doing the exact same thing forever without changing. People are always like, ‘You should try four panels or do it in color.’ I’m like, Nope. This is the formula I’m sticking to forever. Whether it’s good or not, I don’t care.”
The artist’s dedication and longevity has made him something of a veteran in the Richmond comics community. He sometimes sees other cartoonists who draw daily comics thanking him in their books for giving them the inspiration. On several occasions, he’s collaborated with other autobiographical cartoonists — like Carrie McNinch and Mitch Clem — making split zines together. “That always really fun. You can see on Thursday I did this and they did that,” he says.
His 10th collection, encompassing the years 2022-2024, will come out in 2025. Until then you can keep up with Snakepit through his Patreon. Subscribers receive special zines he makes and can read one page of his past anthologies everyday — he’s midway through scanning and posting the second book. “If I did the math right, in three years I’ll have everything up,” he says.
