Peter Jones Interview

Peter Jones

"I walked in and I saw more comic books than I'd ever seen in my life and I was just enchanted. It was like better than Christmas."

Peter Jones has been scheduling his summers around Comic-Con for more than 40 years. Peter moved to San Diego in 1968 and started collecting comics and scrounging for back issues in elementary school. He focuses on DC and Marvel superheroes of the 1950s-1970s. On the morning of Saturday, March 21, 1970, when Peter was just 10 years old, he opened the San Diego Union newspaper to find that San Diego's Golden State Comic-Minicon would take place that day.

He enthusiastically hopped into the passenger seat of his parents' car and has not missed a single Comic-Con since. Peter teaches mathematics at San Diego High School and still has the comic book he spent his "life savings" on as a child, Spider-Man no. 1, which he bargained down from $60 to $50 bucks.

Interviewed by Jonathan Valdez

MADE POSSIBLE BY

This project was made possible with support from Cal Humanities, an independent non-profit state partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. For more information, visit calhum.org.

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