Lollypop Shoved Up My Ass
Zine, Sept & Oct 2017, Isabelle Guns, 28 pgs
If Broken Pencil’s review of this zine from 2011 is any indication, these two recent issues of Lollypop present more of the same from Isabelle Guns. While her pop-timist hot takes on arena rock bands still seem pointless, you have to respect any self-publisher who has persisted this long and gives zero fucks about slapping box-store scrapbooking art on the cover of her October issue. Honestly, while I have little personal interest in reviews of bands like Arcade Fire, Coldplay, or Lorde in my life, Guns’s essays on #MeToo and “Things That Have Made me Upset” present insight into the real tragedy here — that she has more to offer, but is holding out on us. If moments of pop culture curation or middle-aged rebellion could be traded in for more of these more introspective moments — such as her much-too-brief essay on getting shit about not having kids — this could be a much more memorable zine. But there is something to be said for consistency of voice.