For a Guy Made Up Entirely of Sand, Sandman Sure Gets Deathly Ill a Lot

CBR

By Brian Cronin

Published Oct 11, 2018

In their latest look at recurring plot points, CSBG shows how many times the Sandman has seemingly been close to death in the comics.

In Drawing Crazy Patterns, I spotlight at least five scenes/moments from within comic book stories that fit under a specific theme (basically, stuff that happens frequently in comics). Note that these lists are inherently not exhaustive. They are a list of five examples (occasionally I'll be nice and toss in a sixth). So no instance is "missing" if it is not listed. It's just one of the five examples that I chose.

Today, based on a suggestion from reader Rob L., we take a look at some times that the Sandman was dying.

We begin with Incredible Hulk #138, which actually follows up an earlier story where the Mandarin began to turn Sandman into glass. Sandman's pal, the Wizard, helped cure that, but in Hulk #138 (by Roy THomas, Herb Trimpe and Sam Grainger), the problem is coming back and it is about to be fatal for Sandman...

In the end, he is saved by a blood transfusion from Betty Ross...

However, the transfusion goes horribly wrong for Betty when she, instead, gets trapped in glass form! They eventually free her using some gamma radiation (it seemed like every problem can be solved with a little gamma radiation).

Next up, in the Wonder Man Special #1 (by David Michelinie, Kerry Gammill and Vince Colleta), Wonder Man is called in by the East Coast Avengers for a very special mission.

You see, it turns out that Sandman has developed a fatal case of cancer...

Sandman is now loose in a special facility designed for trying to cure stuff like this and he is exposing himself to as much radiation as possible in the hopes that it somehow cures him. Of course, this means the facility is now extremely radioactive and lethal to most people. Most people except Wonder Man, of course. So he is sent in to stop Sandman and he eventually does. He then absorbs away the excess radiation...

But wouldn't you know it, Sandman's moronic plan actually worked!

In a story set at Peter Parker's Senior Prom in Webspinners: Tales of Spider-Man #7-9 (Webspinners was Marvel's attempt at doing as Legends of the Dark Knight series for Spider-Man) by Joe Kelly, Andy Smith and Mark Pennington (with a little Bart Sears thrown in there), Peter decides that he is sick of being treated like such a wimp, so he decides to use a polymer he came up with to stop Sandman even though he hadn't fully tested it...

Sure enough, it begins to kill the Sandman...

Spidey feels awful when he finds out the next issue...

And finally, in Webspinners #9, Spidey comes up with a cure for Sandman...

Page 2: [valnet-url-page page=2 paginated=0 text='More Sandman death goodness!']

After a fight with Venom, Venom actually bit a big chunk out of Sandman and as we see in Peter Parker: Spider-Man #22 (by Paul Jenkins, Mark Buckingham and Dan Green), that bite has destabilized him and he is slowly falling apart...