Milford | Arts & Culture | Youth Arts Journalism Initiative | Comics
Top: Erick Yacko. Bottom: Cris Alvarez. Tristie-Mattea Ortiz Photos.
Every Wednesday brings a wave of newly released comic books to Alternate Universe in Milford, which is why customer Cris Alvarez keeps coming back every week.
Alvarez, 43, is a longtime visitor of Alternate Universe and a proud fan of the location.
No matter how many times he’s entered the store, there’s always a new comic for him to discover, and a conversation to be had with co-owner Erik Yacko.
“I love this guy.” Alvarez said.
Yacko, 55, has been the co-owner of New Haven's Alternate Universe since it opened in 1996, and has been running its Milford location at 398 Bridgeport Ave. since 2005. On a recent Wednesday, that work found him ordering books, selling them at the register, and creating social media posts advertising the store.
“As much as my hobby has become my job, there’s still a fun factor to it,” he said. “You just have to look past all the work.”
Part of looking past the work includes meaningful engagement with customers, such as Alvarez.
As a father and an avid reader, Alvarez has made an effort to get his children into comics. He’s succeeded with his son, who now buys his own weekly issues at the same store. He has yet to convert his younger daughter into a comic book fanatic, though she does enjoy looking at the artwork.
“I wanna see more kids involved in comics and coming in here,” Alvarez said.
He used to get his comics from another store, but made the switch to Alternate Universe when he found out how much better the service from Yacko is, he said. He's been coming to the shop weekly ever since.
A spin-off of the original location in New Haven, Alternate Universe’s Milford branch turned the two comic stores into a dynamic duo. Rightfully earning its mantle as a successor, the comic shop also has some unique differences from its predecessor.
For one, Yacko said, the original shop is in the heart of a college town, meaning it’s a “walk by” store that attracts visitors both familiar and unfamiliar with the creative world of comics. This leads to the shop’s stock accounting for comics that are more accessible to new readers.
Milford’s Alternate Universe, meanwhile, is a “destination” store, meaning that its visitors have to intentionally decide they want to go to a comic store to end up there. Because of this, the location has more options for longtime fans, including rare collectible comics in cases.
The Milford location is also much larger, which allows for many visitors to be inside the store at the same time. That's important, Yacko noted, when Alternate Universe hosts events that invite different kinds of comic book and pop culture guests, such as Adam Wallenta and Stephen Constantino.
He’s also had to get used to running a single location without his co-owner, Joseph Stinson, who remains in New Haven. The two used to be able to spread more work between them, but have had to familiarize themselves with bouncing back and forth more often. While it's not the same as being next to each other behind the counter, they still keep in contact about their business.
Yacko’s job has taught him how to read customers, incentivize sales, be on top of the game with paying his bills, and make sure he’s in with the industry. While he enjoys his role, he said that “once you turn your hobby into a job, you look at it differently.”
One of those differences include not being as much of a “diehard” as he used to be, when it comes to reading.
“It’s more business than entertainment now,” Yacko said.
He still keeps up with certain current comics for the sake of work, but generally prefers older ones. When asked why, he called it a 50/50 split: he thinks books were genuinely better when he was younger, and he also has nostalgia for those times.
Yacko first got into comics at the age of five. What started as a small fascination with the war comics his father would buy blossomed into something much bigger when Yacko laid eyes on his first superhero comic at a newsstand in Bridgeport.
“I was like, ‘Wait a minute, what’s that—A cape? What’s that symbol?’” Yacko said. He saw “a whole ‘nother world” and “got absorbed into it.”
Yacko is a fan of many different titles: some of his favorites are Wolverine and Micronauts, especially the first 12 issues, which he called an “incredible story with awesome art.” His love of Wolverine inspired him to get a tattoo of the character on his right arm.
Since 2015, Yacko has also worked at Massachusetts-based Altered Reality Entertainment, which hosts both pop culture and comic book conventions. His position there is a floor manager and promoter, which has led to him doing most of their graphic design work and meeting many celebrities.
“I’m at a point right now in my life where it’s like, you could have a A+ celebrity stand next to me; it doesn’t affect me anymore,” Yacko said. “I don’t have the ‘oooh’ and the ‘aaah’ factor anymore. All you are is a person that just makes more money than me.”
One of the troubles that come with running a comic store is the competing market in digitized comics, even if “there’s nothing like holding a comic book in your hand.” Yacko said that “eventually, digital is going to bury the print world” due to the instant gratification factor of it.
He added that it’s important to support local comic stores in comparison to alternate sources like Amazon, and that he’s happy to help new readers get into comics.
Despite what he sees as the grim future of physical comics, Yacko continues to make Alternate Universe a safe haven for all things nerdy.
Joe, 74, made an appearance at Alternate Universe on a Wednesday afternoon to see if one of his pre-ordered books had been delivered. He started coming to Alternate Universe after multiple books from a different comic distributor arrived damaged.
“Every time there’s something out, I come here,” Joe said.
Even though modern day ordering has its flaws, he prefers it to the older ways of finding comics at newsstands, and finds Yacko “very conscientious.”
Joe, who did not want to give his last name.
A longtime fan of comics, Joe has a passion for finding out what goes on behind the scenes in the industry, he said. He’s done research on how creators such as Steve Ditko, Alan Moore, Barry Windsor Smith, and Frank McLaughlin have been the victims of all kinds of poor treatment.
“If it’s a bad story, guarantee it’s true,” Joe said.
Years ago, he worked as office help for Marvel artist Jim Steranko, and got a personal view of what it looks like for a comic creator to do all he can to make sure he’s treated properly.
“No matter what he said, no matter how he insulted them, they always called back within 10 minutes,” Joe remembered.
As a young man, Joe began collecting original comic art after working with his dad left him with extra spending money. He once had the largest collection of Jim Steranko original Marvel artwork, he said.
Melissa Benson.
Once he met his wife, Melissa Benson, Joe had something else to put his money towards. He eventually sold his nine foot lockers and 11 comic book boxes, containing #1-100 of every Marvel book, for roughly $30,000 to buy a house for himself and Benson.
With Joe’s seasonal job as a gardener, and Benson’s job as an artist, they found it important to not have to rely on unsteady jobs to pay off their mortgage.
Though Joe has much to say on the negative treatment towards comic books creators, it comes from a love of the medium and the comic stores that help make it all possible.
“Every year, there are less stores,” Joe said. “If you don’t have these stores, Marvel and DC, parts of Warner Brothers and Disney, have no way to sell their comics.”
This article comes from the 2024 Cohort of the Youth Arts Journalism Initiative. Tristie-Mattea Ortiz is a 2024 graduate of West Haven High School. She is headed to Simmons University this fall.