Who is Sandman? Powers & weaknesses in Marvel Comics explained

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 starts with a huge brawl with the sinister Sandman. The massive fight not only acclimates the player to the game’s mechanics but is a beautiful set piece showcasing an underrated Spider-Man villain.

Sandman is one of Spidey’s deadliest foes. He’s a recurring member of the Sinister Six and a deadly threat, but he’s also someone who briefly became one of Marvel’s most powerful superheroes. 

William Baker was the son of a thief who began committing petty crimes right out of high school. He took on the alias Flint Marko in an effort to get to know his father while they were imprisoned together. 

How Marko actually got his powers has changed a few times, thanks to the nature of Marvel’s fluid timescale. While on the run from police after a prison escape, Marko finds himself hiding at a nuclear bomb test site, though later stories put him in a cave storing nuclear waste. 

Regardless, as we see in The Amazing Spider-Man #4, the exposure mutates him so that he turns into sand, of which he has total control. Marko begins a career as The Sandman, a thief and thug for hire who becomes one of Spider-Man’s deadliest recurring foes. 

After a fight with Hydro-Man caused Sandman to merge with him, an emotionally distressed Marko tried his hand at going straight. He eventually sheds his Flint Marko alias and joins Silver Sable’s mercenary group, Wild Pack. 

As a member of the Wild Pack, Sandman spends much of the ‘90s as more of a hero than a villain. He still has his share of run-ins with heroes and villains alike. He would briefly be pulled back into the Sinister Six when threatened by Doctor Octopus but escaped with help from Spider-Man. 

Years later, The Wizard would successfully shatter Sandman’s personality with his ID machine. He returns to his old Flint Marko alias and resumes his darker tendencies as Sandman. Since then, he’s had an on-again, off-again flirtation with whether he’s good or evil, often torn between being a good role model for his daughter and making sure she’s provided for by any means necessary. 

Sand body & sand manipulation

As a result of exposure to nuclear radiation, Flint Marko’s body is now composed of sand, and his consciousness inhabits every grain of it. Marko’s able to manipulate his sand and any that is in his vicinity in a variety of ways, including growing his own size, his density and firing blasts of sand as offensive projectiles. 

While his body is said to inhibit every grain, Spider-Man has identified that one particular grain – one he dubbed a Soul Molecule – contained Marko’s brain pattern and issued commands to the grains of sand he commanded. In the story Ends of the Earth, Spider-Man is able to isolate this grain to stop Sandman. 

As a side effect of his sand form, Sandman is functionally immortal. His consciousness is spread out among the various grains of sand, and his human body is long since destroyed. 

Sandman once believed he was dying, but it was the last remnants of his human mind failing. He continues to survive among the sand and is seen surviving hundreds of years in the future in some stories. 

Water proves the biggest threat to the Sandman. If he gets wet, the sand molecules that form his body become too malleable to form, and he has to let them dry out before he can use his powers. 

There’s also a threat when fighting water-based villains like Hydroman. Both villains respective personas merged together, forming a golem-like villain they called Mud-Thing. In this form, neither man could escape, and neither was truly in control. 

Outside of water, heat is the Sandman’s biggest concern. As his body is made entirely of glass, a temperature that is too high will fuse his various sand grains into glass. 

While a Sandman could potentially alter his body and turn it into glass, this ability is very rarely on display. In most cases, the sand is debilitating for him, and he would need to reform his body by finding additional sand. 

That’s all you need to know about The Sandman! If you want to know more, don’t forget to check out all our comics coverage or use our handy Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 guides to get out there and beat up some sand people.

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