Spiderman Origins: Sandman

We are only a few weeks away before Spiderman 3 hits the theaters. There are two new villains in Spiderman 3, Venom and Sandman. I already did a little write up about Venom so now it's time to talk about Sandman. If you don't want to know his origin before the Spiderman 3 movie, you might want to skip this article.

William Baker was abandoned by his father at a very young age and he and his mother were forced to live in poverty. Baker turned to crime in order to make some money and eventually worked his way up to being a mob enforcer. Baker was imprisoned at a place called Rikers Island. Somehow Baker escaped and while he was on the beach he came in contact with sand that had been effected by a reactor experiment. Baker's body and the radioactive sand bonded and Baker's molecular structure was changed so that he could turn his body from its regular form to a sand-like substance. So of course, he named himself Sandman.

Sandman first encountered Spiderman while at Peter Parker's high school. Eventually Spiderman was able to defeat him with help from a vacuum cleaner. Sandman tried to defeat Spiderman several more times, including joining a group led by Dr. Octopus called the Sinister Six, but failed to defeat Spiderman every time.

Sandman then gives up on trying fighting Spiderman and focuses on another superhero, or rather a whole group of them, the Fantastic Four. He leads a group of villains called the Frightful Four (gotta love those team names) against the Fantastic Four but once again he fails.

When Sandman can't defeat the Fantastic Four he goes back to trying to take on Spiderman. This time Sandman teams up with Hydro-Man, a man that can turn into water. The two villains merge together to form a giant mud monster, but once again Spiderman defeats the two villains.

After all those events Sandman becomes very depressed. Thing of the Fantastic Four, being the hero that he is, consoles Sandman even though he's a bad guy and encourages him to use his powers for good. Eventually Sandman takes Thing's advice and appears occasionally in Spiderman comics helping him out. Sandman later forms a group of reformed villains called the Outlaws, then he joins the Avengers, then he becomes a mercenary working for Silver Sable.

No reformed comic book villain stays reformed though. Sandman once again turns bad and joins a new incarnation of the Sinister Six led by Venom. I don't know why villains always form groups, they never work. Neither does this one. Venom ends up fighting with the other members and to defeat Sandman he rips off a chunk of sand and swallows it. The missing part of Sandman's body structure causes him to destabilize and seemingly die.

I'm not sure how much of Sandman's origin will be told in Spiderman 3, or they could completely make up their own origin. I imagine they'll just show the beginning of his origin in Spiderman 3 but you never know. Venom was the reason for Sandman's first death and Venom is in Spiderman 3.