Sandman (Marvel Comics)

• 1. Introduction

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  The Sandman, a Marvel Comics character who can turn his whole body into sand, lost one of his early fights to a household vacuum cleaner. His opponent was Spider-Man, the hero who would shadow his life for decades. The man inside the sand is William Baker, though the comics mostly call him Flint Marko. He has been a thief, a convict, a mercenary, a reserve Avengers member, and a father. What turns a boy who loved building sand sculptures into a criminal? How does a body made of loose grains hold together, and what happens when it cannot? And why did readers care so much about which side he chose?

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• 2. A Boy Named Baker

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  William Baker was born in Queens, New York, and by the age of three his father had walked out on him and his mother. She took him to Coney Island beach, where he happily lost himself in sand sculptures. A secondary school teacher, Miss Flint, encouraged the craft. She was also his first crush.

  At preparatory school, a boy named Vic bullied him until Baker learned to fight by turning an opponent's own motions against them. He moved as if he "slipped through their fingers like sand". Vic and his friends ended up befriending him. In high school he played football and used the game to channel his anger. He took the nickname Flint from his old teacher.

  Then Vic ran up a large gambling debt to a mobster and begged Flint to fix a football game he had bet on. Flint did it. The coach found out, threw him off the team, and taunted him that he would never accomplish anything important. Flint hit the coach, was expelled, and his life of crime began.

  The crimes grew bigger, and he grew bitter and violent. He landed in prison on Ryker's Island, where he met his own father, Floyd Baker. Flint was friendly to the older man but never revealed who he was. He gave only his nickname and a false surname, Marko. The name echoed the coach's jibe about never making a mark on the world. It also kept his mother from learning he was a criminal. After Floyd was released, Marko broke out of Ryker's Island.

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• 3. Sand and Glass

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  On a beach near Savannah, Georgia, the fugitive wandered into a nuclear testing site. The sand there had been irradiated by an experimental reactor, and contact with it turned his body into sand. Impressed with himself, he took the name Sandman.

  His power is control over the form of his own body. He can harden it, pack it tight, scatter it, or reshape it. Most blows do little more than force him to reform, which he does quickly. Even his striped shirt and cargo pants are colored sand, so he looks dressed. He can mold his arms into a mace or a sledgehammer. Even soaked, he has stretched his sand to double his size.

  His strength depends on how much material he holds. The more nearby sand and rock he pulls into himself, the more mass, strength, and shape-changing ability he has. Though he controls every particle, his mind exists in the astral plane. As a sandstorm he can fly great distances and suffocate his enemies. His strength is several times Spider-Man's and on a par with the Thing's.

  Sand's chemistry also shapes his weaknesses. Cement ingredients were once mixed into him, and he dried into an immobile block. He stayed alive in a coma-like state for a while before returning to normal. Water can hurt him, though bullets pass straight through. Venom once tore a huge piece out of him and left him crippled, and he washed down a drain and into a beach. At 3,400 degrees Fahrenheit he becomes glass, a form he can also control. Changing from sand to glass is fast, but changing back takes time.

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• 4. Enemy of Many Heroes

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  The Human Torch once caught the Sandman by dressing up as Spider-Man. He lured the criminal to a building and set off its sprinkler system. Marko had only just escaped the police by flowing out of a window as sand. Soon he resurfaced in the Sinister Six, led by Doctor Octopus. Inside a sealed metal box, he fought Spider-Man, and the box locked when Spider-Man touched a card naming the Vulture's location. Spider-Man won because his lungs were stronger than the Sandman's. Working with the Enforcers, Marko also captured the Human Torch, but Spider-Man and the Torch beat him.

  After losing to Spider-Man repeatedly, Marko aimed at other heroes. He teamed with the Wizard, Paste-Pot Pete, who later became the Trapster, and Medusa to form the Frightful Four. Their target was the Fantastic Four, and they struck during the engagement party of Reed and Sue. The Fantastic Four, helped by a few other heroes, defeated them. In another battle, alongside Blastaar, Marko wore a green diamond-patterned costume designed by the Wizard. A belt with three buttons mixed chemicals into his body, and the suit turned to sand when he did. He gave it up once the original Frightful Four broke apart.

  The Hulk was next, first alone and later with the Mandarin joining Marko's side. Marko learned, starting with his hands, that he could become glass and change back. Then he contracted cancer, took over a medical research center, and fought the Hulk again. He battled Wonder Man too, and radiation cured his cancer.

  He later allied with Hydro-Man against Spider-Man, and an accident fused the two into a creature called the Mud-Thing. Spider-Man and the police dehydrated it, and months later the pair separated. The time trapped together made Marko question his bad choices. The Thing, after an aborted fight, urged him to use his ability for good. Marko met the Thing a second time, to watch a sports game.

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• 5. The Slow Road to Redemption

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  The Amazing Spider-Man #4, dated September 1963, introduced the Sandman. Writer Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko created him as a Spider-Man adversary. He came back in The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1 and in issues #18-19, then spread to The Incredible Hulk and The Fantastic Four.

  The first issue of Marvel Team-Up, in March 1972, made him the villain but gave him a more morally ambiguous portrayal. Writer Roy Thomas later said, "I've been pleased to see Sandman's gradual redemption, whose seeds perhaps I helped plant in that story. He just seemed to me like a character who might have that in him..." Later stories went back to the original depiction. A decade on, the sympathetic version returned in Marvel Two-in-One #86, in April 1982. There he was billed as co-star with his nemesis, the Thing.

  In the comics that followed, Marko boarded with the Cassadas and teamed up with Spider-Man against the Enforcers. He rescued Spider-Man and Silver Sable from the Sinister Syndicate, and she recruited him as a freelance operative. Doctor Octopus forced him back into the Sinister Six, but Marko turned on them. Doctor Octopus turned him to glass as punishment, and Spider-Man saved him. He also joined the Outlaws, a group of reformed Spider-Man enemies. The others were Prowler, Rocket Racer, Puma, and Will o' the Wisp.

  A presidential pardon followed, and he briefly served as a reserve Avenger. Then he became a full-time mercenary in Silver Sable's Wild Pack, beside heroes such as Paladin and Battlestar. During the Infinity War, an evil double overwhelmed him and almost killed his teammates.

  Then Marko turned on Spider-Man and the Thing and declared loyalty to evil and to the Wizard. Many fans had come to see him as a hero, and they objected loudly. Marvel rushed out a story reworking The Amazing Spider-Man volume 2 issue #4. In it, the Wizard had kidnapped him and used a mind control device called the Id Machine to turn him back into a villain.

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• 6. Scattered and Reassembled

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  A chunk of sand torn out by Venom's mouth cost the Sandman his grip on his own shape. The Id Machine had worked too well, and he set about reforming the Sinister Six to destroy both Spider-Man and Doctor Octopus. He recruited Venom as the sixth member, and Venom double-crossed him. Before sliding into a sewer, he admitted that life on the good side had been hard to cope with. He asked Spider-Man to tell his mother he was sorry he had not kept his promise to be a force for good. He washed into Jones Beach, New York, and was thought dead.

  His body and mind lay scattered across the beach for too long. His mind split into good and evil, and the evil half made sand vortexes to trap beachcombers. Spider-Man used that instability to free the captives, and the Sandman exploded. His sand then drifted across New York and settled into beings who personified him as good, bad, gentle, and innocent. Spider-Man tried to persuade them to unify. The evil one merged with the innocent and gentle ones, but the good one rebuffed it. His mind could stand the separation only briefly, so he crumbled and blew away. Later he was among the villains recruited to recover the Identity Disc and was seemingly killed in a mutiny. At the end he turned up alive, working with the Vulture to manipulate the others.

  The storyline "Sandblasted" ran in Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #17-19, from April to June 2007. In it, Marko asked Spider-Man to help clear his father, Floyd, who was jailed for murdering a homeless man. Marko admitted Floyd was a petty criminal but insisted he was no killer. The victim resembled Peter Parker's Uncle Ben, and the real killer proved to be the Chameleon 2211. Floyd Baker was saved, and the Sandman thanked Spider-Man.

  In "Spider-Man: The Gauntlet," Spider-Man traced a string of murders and an abduction to the Sandman. The missing girl, Keemia Alvarado, was his daughter, and her mother was among the victims. Marko was hiding with her on Governor's Island. His powers had grown so that he could make duplicates with their own personalities. They claimed to have committed the murders, to Marko's shock. Spider-Man destroyed them with a fan. Keemia was sent to a foster home by Child Protective Services, and the Sandman stayed at large.

  Keemia drove his choices afterward. In "Origin of the Species," he went after Menace's infant, believing Doctor Octopus would reward him by reuniting him with Keemia. Electro accidentally struck him with lightning and briefly turned him into fulgurite. In Big Time, he joined a new Sinister Six and objected to Doctor Octopus' plan to detonate New York, because Keemia was still there. He was angry when Doctor Octopus teleported the Wizard, his old Frightful Four teammate, into the upper atmosphere. He attacked the Mad Thinker, saying he did not want to lose any more friends. Yet he accepted the job because of a planned compensation fee of 2 billion dollars, which he thought could win him custody of Keemia.

  He guarded a facility in the Sahara Desert, which gave him control of the largest body of sand on Earth. Even so, Spider-Man, the Black Widow, and Silver Sable beat him. Spider-Man had found out that the Sandman's body must keep one key grain of sand holding his conscious mind. He isolated that grain from the rest. The trick was too hard to set up to be a regular tactic. Spider-Man and Silver Sable then violently interrogated him about Doctor Octopus' secrets.

  After the "Dying Wish" storyline, the Superior Spider-Man stole the Sandman's captive form and took it to his underwater lab. He formed the Superior Six with the Chameleon, Electro, Mysterion, and the Vulture. He controlled their minds and forced them to do heroic deeds against their will. Some of those deeds nearly killed them. They broke free and nearly destroyed New York seeking revenge. With the help of Sun Girl, the Superior Spider-Man barely stopped them.

  Inspired by villains whose morals were inverted in "AXIS," the Sandman broke into Ryker's Island to find a gang leader named Dixon. He incapacitated Dixon and his followers, then left with Dixon's cellmate, a "good egg" he thought deserved a second chance. Later he joined a Sinister Six led by Aaron Davis, wearing a recolored Iron Spider armor, in a plot to steal a decommissioned S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier.

  Then his body began to lose its consistency. The Mad Thinker and the Wizard could find no solution, and he collapsed and was hospitalized. Spider-Man took him to the beach he had visited as a child and stayed until his body broke down. The Sandman did not die, but he lost his human shape and now had a blob-shaped body. A future Sandman from Earth-51838, where the sun had gone out, then took over his body. Spider-Man received some of the Sandman's powers and used them to beat the invader. The Human Torch and a device called the Multisect helped send the invader back. After saying goodbye to Spider-Man, the Sandman went off to adjust to his new form. He had developed a fear of his newly discovered immortality.

  At an unknown beach, he regained his human shape but lost his sense of direction. Doctor Octopus helped him regain it, which pleased Kindred. After the "Gang War" storyline, Peter Parker met him in Ravencroft while visiting Anna Watson with Mary Jane. The Sandman asked to be called William Baker and said he had turned himself in. He said he was trying to be good, though parts of him were still bad. Flint Marko, he explained, was the bad part. When Peter named their mutual friend as Spider-Man, Marko tried to rampage until a sonic inhibitor stopped him. Before Peter left, William asked him to warn Spider-Man that "they" were coming to break Marko out. The attackers were Doctor Octopus, Electro, Kraven the Hunter, Mysterio, and the Vulture.

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• 7. Namesakes and Variants

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  In Marvel Mystery Comics, a different Sandman ruled the Land of Dreams, in the Realm of Fairies of the possibly imaginary world of Nowhere. Each day he laid a blanket over the realm. Anyone who grabbed a dream from the dream tree dreamed about whatever they had taken, and woke when he lifted the blanket. Anyone who grabbed none fell into an eternal, dreamless sleep.

  In Journey into Mystery, an alien Sandman crash-landed in Mexico. Local tribespeople took him for an evil spirit and sealed him in an airless, lightless cave. He stayed there in suspended animation until a vacationing Marine named Steve Bronson and his family accidentally freed him in the early 1960s. The Sandman planned to conquer Earth and ordered the Bronsons to carry him to North America. Bullets passed through him, gas failed because he does not breathe, and bombs only scattered pieces he could regather. He meant to grow by absorbing every beach. Bronson's son Bobby ended the plan by throwing a pile of water over him, leaving the alien too soggy to move. The military then moved him to a top-secret underground facility.

  The Puppet Master and the Mad Thinker built an android Sandman to fight the Fantastic Four. While Marko served with the Wild Pack, he and his teammates fought an imposter Sandman alongside an imposter Doctor Doom. That version had a mohawk and was created by Magus with help from Anthropomorpho.

  Alternate universes added many more. In Marvel 1602: Fantastick Four, he belongs to the Four Who Are Frightful and manipulates dreams, like his mythological namesake. In House of M, he serves in the Hood's Masters of Evil until Rogue and Marrow kill him. In Marvel Noir, he is an enforcer for the Crime Master with granite-like skin. In the Ultimate Marvel universe, Justin Hammer gave him powers during a failed attempt to recreate the Super Soldier Serum. In the Ultimate Universe imprint, he gained powers after being captured and experimented on by A.I.M.

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• 8. On Screen

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  In 2009, IGN ranked the Sandman 72nd on its list of the Greatest Comic Book Villains of All Time. By then he had already crossed into other media. Thomas Haden Church played Flint Marko in Spider-Man 3 in 2007 and again in Spider-Man: No Way Home in 2021. Jack Huston plays him in the 2026 series Spider-Noir.

  In Spider-Man 3, Marko escapes prison, visits his family, and is forced out by his upset ex-wife Emma. He needs money for his critically ill daughter, Penny. While running from police, he stumbles into a particle physics test facility and is transformed. Spider-Man learns that Marko killed his Uncle Ben. Years earlier, Marko tried to steal Ben's car at gunpoint, and his partner Dennis Carradine startled him into pulling the trigger by accident. Later Marko apologizes, and Spider-Man forgives him and lets him go. In No Way Home, a botched spell lands him in another universe. Jon Watts provided motion capture. Doctor Strange eventually returns him home after Peter-One cures his powers.

  A member of the Elementals in Spider-Man: Far From Home, identified as the Earth Elemental, drew on the Sandman. It had power over rocks and sand and attacked Mexico before Mysterio defeated it off-screen. In Spider-Noir, Marko is a bodyguard and the lover of Cat Hardy. He was a soldier captured in World War I and experimented on by the Germans. His body turned to sand more than a decade later.

  Television gave him many faces. Tom Harvey voiced him in the 1967 Spider-Man episode "Sands of Crime." Ted Cassidy voiced him in The New Fantastic Four. Wally Burr voiced the 1981 version, and Christopher Collins voiced him in Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends. In The Spectacular Spider-Man, John DiMaggio voiced a petty crook. In Ultimate Spider-Man, Dee Bradley Baker voiced a prison escapee whom Spider-Man gradually convinces to become a hero. In a 2017 Spider-Man episode, Travis Willingham voiced a former henchman of Hammerhead with a daughter named Keemia Marko. In Spidey and His Amazing Friends, he is voiced by Thomas F. Wilson. The BBC radio adaptation of Spider Man cast Michael Roberts.

  One version never reached the screen. The creators of Spider-Man (1994) were told to avoid conflicting with James Cameron's proposed Spider-Man film. In Cameron's script, Michael Biehn was considered to play a mutated henchman named Boyd. So the 1994 series used Hydro-Man instead, and the Sandman missed Fantastic Four (1994) as well.

  He has also been a boss and playable character in many video games. He appears in Questprobe featuring Spider-Man, Spider-Man: Friend or Foe, Lego Marvel Super Heroes, Marvel: Future Fight, and Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order, among others. In Spider-Man 2 from 2023, Leandro Cano voices a Sandman who reformed years earlier to spend time with his daughter Keemia. After he is defeated, the two Spider-Men collect the scattered sand crystals of his mind and use them to build Keemia a statue of her father.

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