Peter Sanderson

Peter Sanderson
Sanderson at the 2015 East Coast Comicon in Secaucus, New Jersey
Born	(1952-04-25) April 25, 1952 (age 65) Milton, Massachusetts
Area(s)	Writer, Researcher, Critic, Academic
Notable works	Marvel Saga Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe

Peter Sanderson, Jr. (born April 25, 1952) is a comic book critic and historian, as well as an instructor/lecturer in the New York area concerning the study of graphic novels/comic books as literature.

He is best known for his work as a researcher at the two main American comics companies, DC and Marvel, where he helped to catalog the various fictional characters that comprised their respective continuities.

As a teenager, and later, at Columbia University, Sanderson's first involvement in the comics field was as a "letterhack," a frequent contributor to comic book letter columns. His missives impressed DC Comics editor Julius Schwartz enough for Schwartz expand the letter columns in some titles to a second, separate page (such as "Flash-Grams — Extra", "Letters To the Batcave — Extra", and "JLA Mailroom — Special Peter Sanderson Edition") to facilitate Sanderson's analysis. In the early 1980s Sanderson wrote for comic fanzines.

From there, Sanderson broke into the comic book industry proper; he was first hired by DC Comics, where he was given the task of reading every comic book published by the company since 1935. His research was used by Len Wein to write Who's Who in the DC Universe. Sanderson then went to work for Marvel as their first (and only) archivist, and contributed as a researcher on the various Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe series in the 1980s and early 1990s.