Sandman (Marvel Comics) - Fictional Character Biography

Fictional Character Biography

William Baker was born in Queens, New York. At three years old his father abandoned him and his mother. In these early years she took her son to Coney Island beach. He lost himself happily in sand sculptures, a craft he would use in secondary school under the encouragement of his teacher (and first crush), Miss Flint.

In preparatory school, a boy named Vic bullied William until he, William, learned to fight using opponents' motions against themselves, a technique he performed as if he "slipped through their fingers like sand." Vic and his buddies posed no match to William, who wore them down and who they even befriended throughout high school. At this time, William, a football player on his school's team, used football to channel his anger to apply it to what he sensed as a nascent change in himself. While playing football he adopted the moniker "Flint", the last name of his affection, Miss Flint.

Vic incurs a large debt to a mob. In desperation, he begs Flint to fix a football game he bet on to pay off his debt. Flint does, but finds himself kicked off the team after the coach discovers his involvement in this corruption. The coach vituperates the young, tenderfoot trickster by saying that he will accomplish nothing of importance in his life. Flint soon roughs up his ex-coach, resulting in his expulsion from school and segue into a life of crime.

His illegal activity increases in depth and scope, turning him into a violent, bitter man. Eventually he ends up in prison on Ryker's Island where he meets his father, Floyd Baker. He is friendly to his father but does not tell him who he is. He tells Floyd his nickname, Flint, and a false surname, Marko, inspired by his former coach’s taunts about not "making a mark" on the world. He would use the alias Flint Marko from that point on. (He changed his name also to prevent his mother from discovering he's a criminal.) His father's presence ameliorates him. After Floyd is released from prison, Marko escapes.

Immediately, William flees to a nuclear testing site on a beach near Savannah, Georgia where he comes into contact with sand that had been irradiated by an experimental reactor. His body and the radioactive sand bond, which changes Marko's molecular structure into sand. Impressed, he names himself the Sandman after his new powers.

In high school Marko clashes with Peter Parker/Spider-Man, for the first time. He escaped Spider-Man in his first battle, but later Spider-Man found the Sandman hiding in his school. He defeats Marko with a vacuum cleaner and handed it over to the police. The Sandman escaped by getting through his window after turning himself to sand, but was recaptured by the Human Torch after the Torch lured the Sandman to a building by disguising himself as Spider-Man, then activated the sprinkler systems. After a while the troubled youth resurfaces as a member of the Sinister Six, led by Doctor Octopus. He battled Spider-Man inside an airtight metal box, which was activated when Spider-Man touched a card saying where the Vulture was, but the Sandman was defeated due to Spider-Man having stronger lungs than him.

Alongside the Enforcers, he captures the Human Torch but later succumbs to Spider-Man and the Human Torch.

After Spider-Man defeats Flint numerous times, Flint diverts his attention to other super heroes. He teams with the Wizard, Paste Pot Pete and Medusa to form the Frightful Four to combat the Fantastic Four, which attacked during Reed and Sue's engagement party. The Fantastic Four with the help of a few other super heroes pound this fledgling group. In another battle he loses against the Four, he dons a diamond-patterned green costume designed by Wizard with a purple cap and is joined by Blastaar. Later he and Hulk duel for the first time. Mandarin joins him in his next conflict against the Hulk.

In time Sandman discovers—starting with his hands—his body can transform into glass and that he can reverse that effect. He contracted cancer and overtook a medical research center. He battled Wonder Man but was cured of cancer by radiation. Afterward, he allied himself with Hydro-Man to battle their mutual enemy, Spider-Man. An accident merged the two villains into a muddle-headed mud monster whose rampage was short-lived when Spider-Man and the police dehydrated the monstrosity. Months later, the supervillains managed to separate their masses and went their separate ways.

Depression sinks into Baker in an episode where he is having second thoughts about evil. The Thing of the Fantastic Four sees Baker's angst and urges him to straighten himself out and use his ability to do good. He began boarding with the Cassadas and teamed with Spider-Man against the Enforcers. Sandman then makes sporadic appearances in Spider-Man comics assisting his former enemy. The first such appearance has him coming to the rescue of Spider-Man and Silver Sable, who are outnumbered and surrounded by the Sinister Syndicate. Silver Sable is impressed by Sandman's performance and recruits him as a freelance operative. Doctor Octopus coerced him to rejoin Sinister Six, but he turned against the clan, whose leader, Doctor Octopus, turned him into glass for his treason. Spider-man, however, saved the Sandman. Sandman also appears as part of The Outlaws, a group of reformed Spider-Man enemies, such as Prowler, Rocket Racer, Puma and Will o' the Wisp, on occasion that would aid Spider-Man.

Later he receives a presidential pardon and briefly joins the Avengers as a reserve member. Later, he becomes a full-time mercenary in the employ of Silver Sable, as a member of her Wild Pack, serving alongside heroes such as Paladin and Battlestar. Sandman is one of the few heroes temporarily overwhelmed by their evil doubles during the Infinity War. This double almost kills them all.

In The Amazing Spider-Man vol. 2 #4, Marko turned against Spider-Man and his sometimes ally Thing and declared his allegiance to evil and his former employer, the villainous Wizard. This change proved egregiously incompatible to what many Sandman fans had thought Sandman had become, what he had reformed to, a hero.. This outcry caused Marvel to rush out a story, in Peter Parker: Spider-Man vol. 2 #12, which retconned The Amazing Spider-Man #4 in which the Wizard kidnapped Sandman and used his mind control machine, the Id Machine, to control him.

The machine worked too well and Sandman went about reforming the Sinister Six to destroy both Spider-Man and Doctor Octopus, only to be double-crossed by Venom, who Sandman recruited as the sixth member of the team. During Venom's brawl against Sandman, the vicious black spider's mouth rips a chunk of sand from Sandman. That missing sand destabilizes Sandman, causing him to lose his ability to maintain his human form. Before falling into the sewer (and as a nod to fans who rejected Marvel's attempt to re-villainize the character), Sandman admitted that part of the reason for his fall from grace was the trouble he had to really cope with life on the good guys' side, and asks Spider-Man to tell his mother he's sorry he didn't fulfull his promise to her, to be a force for good. Sandman washes away and slides down a sewer, from which he mixes into Jones Beach, New York and is thought dead.

Sandman's body and mind are scattered throughout the beach. This separation lasts too long for him, causing his mind to split into good and its opposite, evil, which when dominant created sand vortexes to ensnare beach combers. Spider-Man arrived to confront Sandman, ultimately using Sandman's mental instability to free his captives and cause him to explode.

His sand wafts throughout New York and touches down into piles forming beings that personify him: the good, the bad, the gentle and the innocent. Spider-Man locates these sandmen to convince them unify. Sandman's evil persona merges with his innocent and gentle personas, but Sandman's good one rebuffs the evil one. Because Sandman's mind can handle his personality in separation for a limited time, he loses his ability to retain himself, crumbling and blowing away, leaving Spider-Man to ponder the nature of his scuddled foe.

Sandman is one of the villains recruited to recover the Identity Disc, but during its recovery seemingly he is killed in a mutiny. At the series' end Sandman is found alive and working with Vulture to manipulate the other villains.

In the storyline "Sandblasted," in Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #17–19 (April-June 2007), Sandman asks Spider-Man to help him redeem his father, who has been charged with and imprisoned for murdering a homeless man. He admits his father was a petty criminal but insists he wouldn't commit murder. Baker also said the victim resembles Peter Parker's Uncle Ben, who had been murdered years before then. Sandman and Spider-Man find the killer, Chameleon 2211. Chameleon 2211 kills Uncle Ben who Hobgoblin 2211 brought from an alternate universe and had been posing as him after that. Thanks to Spider-Man, Floyd Baker is switched with Chameleon 2211 and saved, for which Sandman thanks Spider-Man.

Sandman returned in Spider-Man: The Gauntlet storyline, which redefined the character and his powers/mental state. While investigating a series of murders and a missing girl named Keemia, whose mother is a victim of those murders, Spider-Man traces the murders and the abduction to the Sandman, the girl's father, who is hiding on Governor's Island with Keemia. Sandman's powers have evolved to where he can create duplicates of himself who have their own personalities and to Marko's shock claim they committed the murders.

Spider-Man sneaks away and uses a fan to obliterate the sandmen. Originally Spider-Man believed Keemia would be handed to her grandmother, but instead she was sent to a foster home by Child Protective Services. Carlie, one of Spider-Man's friends who had been under police suspicion for tampering with evidence from the murders committed by Sandman's duplicates, is exonerated, but Sandman is at large.

During the Origin of the Species storyline, Sandman is among the supervillains invited by Doctor Octopus to join his villains' team where he becomes involved in a plot to receive a reward and securing some specific items for him. Sandman went after Spider-Man for Menace's infant Keemia. He ended up colliding with Electro before they showed up. Spider-Man goes on a rampage against the villains after the infant was stolen from him by the Chameleon. In the dock, Sandman along with Shocker and the Enforcers are hiding, however Spider-Man collapses the floor of the building, which falls into the water. Sandman attempts to rise to attack, but Spider-Man shot him using Shocker's vibrational air blasts.

In Big Time, he is part of the new Sinister Six, along with Mysterio, Rhino, Doctor Octopus, Chameleon, and Electro. He rises up against Doctor Octopus' plan to detonate New York, saying Keemia is still there. He is later angered when, during a confrontation between the Sinister Six and the Intelligencia, Doctor Octopus teleports the Wizard into the upper atmosphere, using the Intelligencia's equipment. Sandman was talking with his former Frightful Four teammate and old friend at the time, prompting Sandman to violently attack the Mad Thinker when he was going after Electro because he claimed that he did not want to lose any more friends.

When Doctor Octopus puts his plan into action, Sandman is satisfied with the job because of the planned two billion dollar "compensation fee", which he reasons will help him gain custody of his daughter. However, although sent to guard a facility in the Sahara Desert giving him complete control of the largest body of sand in the world, he is defeated by Spider-Man, Black Widow and Silver Sable when Spider-Man identifies and isolates the one grain of sand that contains his conscious mind. Spider-Man and Silver Sable then violently interrogate Sandman to reveal all of Doctor Octopus' secrets to them.