Sandman is a Spider-Man villain who becomes sand. He can generally assume any shape and size within reasonable limits (I don’t think he can assume planet size, even if there is enough sand to do so) and for some reason, also gains super strength along with this change. He’s generally portrayed as having a larger frame. Sandman’s human identity is Flint Marko/William Baker.
I was always rather curious about Sandman because my first exposure to him was through the Sega video game “The Amazing Spider-Man vs. The Kingpin” which was damn difficult! You couldn’t defeat Sandman by physical force in that game – you had to lure him to the beginning of the stage and use a fire hydrant to spray him with water, then punch his armpits (it looked that way thanks to the height differences between the two characters). Sandman never appeared in the 1994 “Spider-Man” animated series because he was slated to appear in a “Spider-Man” movie, which made me even more curious since I wanted to see how he would fare as a cartoon character.
Sandman is from the 6 inch Marvel Legends line, and he comes as part of the SDCC 2016’s ‘The Raft’ box set. ‘The Raft’ retails for SGD $199.90. Thank you, Hasbro, for sending him over!
This version of Sandman is meant to emulate him turning into his sand form, as evidenced by his brown/beige colour scheme. However, the artwork shows him wearing his traditional striped green t-shirt, which makes sense in a way since those are supposed to be mug shots.
His sand deco even extends to his face, which means that he has no pupils but sand-coloured eyeballs instead. It’s an interesting detail, and one that really reminds you that this Sandman is literally a sand man.
His body actually looks like it is a half-naked torso, rather than a man wearing a tight t-shirt. This is partly reinforced by the fact that his sand deco looks quite close to a tanned skin tone. I’m ambivalent about this, although I do see the objective behind this choice of sculpt – Sandman is, essentially, naked, and clothes are merely his way of looking fairly acceptable in society. Were he to change to sand mode, he wouldn’t need to keep up that pretence.
Thankfully, he is still wearing pants.
His hands are moulded for him to hold weapons and accessories, although he doesn’t have any specific to himself. I’d have liked if one hand could have been moulded as a fist, so he can punch Spider-Man.
His face sculpt is really detailed though. You can even see the frown lines on his forehead and how his cheeks are raised as he bares his teeth.
Overall, I’d say this is an interesting version of Sandman to have. If he had some sand implements it would have complete the effect, but as it stands you can give him a sandy voice (well, my characters change voice when they go into different modes) to simulate the fact that he’s now a living sand statue.
Hope this has been fun to read! I’ll look at Enchantress next.
The Raft (SDCC 2016)
Spider-Man (and The Raft’s packaging)
Marcus Goh is a Transformers enthusiast and avid pop culture scholar. You can find him on social media as Optimarcus and on his site.
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