Levine, Jeff – Snapshot #5

Website

Snapshot #5

Let me start this off by saying that Jeff LeVine remains one of the very few comic heroes of mine. Oh sure, I have a respect for a whole bunch of people, and I like the work of probably hundreds of artists. It’s not the same as somebody being a hero. He is for one reason: Destroy All Comics. The greatest magazine (I guess you could call it a zine, but it deserves a bigger name than that) about comics ever, I looked forward to this thing coming out more than most comics. Interviews with the small press greats, comics, rants, reviews, all done with an unmistakable love of comics. It’s the model that I’m setting up this page to be, and I know I have a long way to go before that’ll ever happen. After he stopped doing D.A.C., I lost track of what he was up to for a while. He also did the incredible No Hope for Slave Labor graphics for a few years, followed by Lust For Life for a few issues. They were both favorites of mine and I couldn’t wait for each issue to come out, but apparently I was in the minority because he either stopped doing it or it was cancelled and he fell off the radar. I should have known that he wouldn’t stop doing comics altogether and I found the latest work of his in the Paper Radio catalog (PO Box 254 Allston, MA 02134, send a couple of stamps and ask for a catalog), called Snapshot.

Snapshot #5 (and all of the issues that I’ve seen) isn’t really a mini comic, at least not strictly speaking. I don’t know what you’d call it though. Zine, maybe? Well, whatever it is, there’s nothing else like it that I know of. It’s part comics, part Jeff writing either about something that had happened to him at the time or earlier in the day, and part photographs. It’s mostly talk about his job, not knowing where he wants to be in the world or what would finally make him happy, and about his emotional distance from most of his family (except his brother). A problem I’ve had in a lot of these reviews is that I don’t want to give too much of anything away. There’s a fine line, I know that, but a lot of the joy that I get out of mini comics is the joy of discovering them. Not necessarily being the first person that I know to hear about them, just the joy of reading them without really knowing what to expect. With Snapshot, I could tell you what he says in every fucking essay in this book and you know what? It would be still be amazing. This is pure poetry and you’re only cheating yourself by not buying it. Shame on you! Here’s a little sample of what you’re missing.

Jeff’s home page

Jeff e-mailed me and told me that all the issues for this series are sold out. He has #1-4 up on his website, so I guess you’ll just have to live with that for now. He also said that he plans to have everything he’s ever done up on his site eventually, so you’ll be able to get as many samples of his work as you should need to convince you to buy his stuff.