Pops: Parents on Parenting
Zine, Jonas, #1, 40 pgs, [email protected]
This zine is fantastic and we’re lucky its contributors didn’t just cop out and make some lame-ass blog. Pops is about parenting and it gives a few different POVs on the topic from a few different folks. All accounts are, more or less, first-hand and it’s interesting to hear various stories of toddlers, tots and pint-sized terrors without the requisite bitching you’d find within your average garden-variety parenting blog. Jonas is the curator and he does a great job at ensuring there’s a lot of variety here, free of hyperbole and hysteria, which is always nice. The innards include stories of parents dealing with anxiety, the struggles and rewards of having a child with autism, custody battles and other weighty topics. Pops works because there is a dire realness to the content here and it’s presented without frills in a simple, sorta sloppy looking zine packed with a whole lotta heart. There’s even a 2D death metal interlude that breaks up the dialogue just to prove that even amid all the heavy adult-oriented stuff, parents (and people reading about parents) can crack a smile too. (Cam Gordon)