This July, the Million Year Picnic, New England’s oldest comic book store, will be celebrating 50 years of serving the Cambridge and Greater Boston comic book community! Our anniversary plans include a festival of movies based on comic books/graphic novels screening at the Brattle Theater (40 Brattle Street) the weekend of July 19-21.

The centerpiece of the festival will be a screening of the movie Robot Dreams Saturday, July 20th, at 6:30pm. Sara Varon, the author of the Robot Dreams graphic novel, will be flying into Boston to introduce the movie and participate in a Q&A and book signing at the theater after the movie. Tickets will be $14 for the event or $30 for the event plus a copy of one of Sara’s books (you may choose between Robot Dreams or Sara’s new graphic novel, Detective Sweet Pea and the Case of the Golden Bone).

Robot Dreams (2023) is a wordless, all-ages animated movie chronicling the adventures and misfortunes of Dog and Robot in New York City during the 1980s (it’s got a 97% rating on Rotten Tomatoes!). Tickets for Robot Dreams will go on sale Friday 6/16/2024 on the Brattle’s website (https://brattlefilm.org/movies/robot-dreams/).

Tentatively, other films playing that weekend will include Ghost World (2001); American Splendor (2003); Scott Pilgrim vs  The World (2010); Persepolis (2007); and Black Panther (2018). To confirm films and showtimes, check https://brattlefilm.org/, and to find out about other Million Year Picnic anniversary events, keep an eye on our website (https://www.themillionyearpicnic.com/) and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/myp_comics/) pages.