Graffic Traffic – Column

Graffic Traffic

by Ryk McIntyre
illustration by Greg Prindeville

If you’re alert, it’s the first thing you notice about the place. It’s not the color or the noise, it’s not the people there. The first thing you notice is always the same: the smell.

It smells like fun.

Unarguably the oldest comic book store in our area, Million Year Picnic, located at 99 Mt. Auburn Street in Cambridge, is the standard for what a comic book store ought to be. They have everything. They have two of everything. And not just the new comics, the hot super-hero comics, the bad-chick-with-bladed-weapon-psychosis comics. No, no, no… they got the stuff.

They’ve got comic-strip collections – all the good ones: Foxtrot, Boffo, Dilbert, Calvin & Hobbes, Dyes To Watch Out For etc, etc, and those are only the ones that catch my eye. There’s much more.

If I wrote “Graphic Novels,” with all the graphic novels they have in stock, I’d get away without having to write the rest of this column. Collections of mini-series or multiple issue storylines taken from on-going series are a great way to enjoy a good read without the effort and the expense of hunting down back issues. Moreover, they stock a wide-range of European comics/graphic novels that are just plain hard to get here.

(…huh-un, heh heh, they also have a lotta sex comics… y’know the kind men like. And the kind women like. And the kind of books appealing to gays, lesbians, leatherites and sado-masabisquits, or however you pronounce it. (Beats me.) )

Even (and frankly, especially) if you’re one of those who only likes alternatives – the smaller the press, the better – this is your holy place. Bow down. They have the book you seek, oh student of Palookaville, oh devotee of Hate and Love and Rockets, bask ye worshippers of Roberta Gregory who is a goddess!

Oh heck, they have almost everything, really. Why, they even stock mini-comics. As I was talking to Tom, who was working there one Thursday evening, he suggested I mention that fact, and well I should! The “mini-comics,” usually much smaller books (duh), and almost always black and white, are true, original gems, most of them. Begun as a quick, underground, xerox knock-off idea, you could consider the mini-comic the true child, brother to the bastard that is the “ash can.” If these metaphors mean nothing to you, find a mini-comics artist and buy her/his book, then ask him what they mean. See? It is more fun than Xmen! By the by, Tom’s own mini comic “Eyewater” will be back in print and on sale…soon.

There’s more, there’s more. Cards, T-shirts, (I don’t know anywhere else you can even find “Hot Head Paissan” comics, let alone T-shirts!), toys, magazines, back issues, rare collectables, etcetera. You could spend time staring at the colors and still be happy. Truly “the Picnic” is that rare commodity – a source of endless entertainment for the young and old, the comic book readers who have lives (and the usual kind), the first time browsers and those who know the plot-line to Wild Cats and Young Blood and all the vital connections in between.

Take a jaunt sometime, stop by, buy a few things, and appreciate the diversity that is, and always will be, the comic art form, while marveling at a store that offers that diversity and does it well. Say hi to Tony and ask him about how he hurt his leg rescuing Red Cross workers from Quiraqistan; meet Mike and have him point out his drawings (notice how the eyes follow you around…ooh! Spooky!) When you meet Peter, don’t ask him about Thundra, She Queen of the Femazon Planet. It’s a painful memory. He doesn’t like to talk about it. Why you can even wonder where David is and what he does behind the scenes (hmm!). Finally, you can buy Tom’s mini-comic when it comes out. And it, like everything else, you can find at Million Year Picnic, located at 99 Mt. Auburn St. in Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA.