Sandman

**Flint Marko**, also known as the **Sandman**, is the secondary antagonist of Sam Raimi's *Spider-Man* trilogy, serving as the unseen overarching antagonist of the 2002 superhero film *Spider-Man* and the secondary antagonist of its 2007 threequel *Spider-Man 3*. He is also a supporting antagonist in the 2021 Marvel Cinematic Universe film *Spider-Man: No Way Home*.

He is a professional criminal who accidentally kills Peter Parker's uncle, Benjamin "Ben" Parker. Sandman is seen as a tragic villain because he is portrayed as a decent man who only breaks the law in order to afford the care his cancer-stricken daughter desperately needs. However, his powers and methods in order to do so makes him one of Spider-Man's most dangerous foes. Flint Marko's main weapon of choice was his own body, which he distorted to fit whatever purpose he wanted, although his main firearm was a Colt Python. 357 Magnum revolver, which he used in his robberies prior to getting his powers.

Fourteen years later, Sandman was accidentally transported to a different universe through space and time from a spell performed by Doctor Strange, where he was desperate to return to his universe to be with his daughter again and teamed up with other alternate villains from other worlds in order to get back to her. After being curd, he is sent back to his universe, which is possibly the original timeline like his Peter.

He is portrayed by Thomas Haden Church, who also played Roach in *Tales from the Crypt Presents Demon Knight*, Lyle Van de Groot in the *George of the Jungle* duology, Killer Moth in the second season of *Teen Titans*, Dwayne LaFontant in *Over the Hedge*, Tal Hajus in *John Carter* and Quillgin in *Regular Show*.

## Personality

The extent of Flint Marko's personality before his incarceration is unclear, but it was more than obvious that he truly cared for his daughter Penny to the point of committing thefts to support her illness. This same love for Penny was further amplified after his transformation into Sandman, causing him to literally attack money transporters with his newfound abilities. When Spider-Man tried to stop him, Sandman saw him only as an obstacle to the healing of his daughter and did not hesitate to try to kill him when he got in his way.

Following his loss to Spider-Man when he was corrupted by the symbiote, during which he gets brutally beaten by him and loses the stolen money for Penny, Flint became even more ruthless and desperate to the point of falling into a relationship with Venom to take out Spider-Man after the new villain makes an offer to kill the Spider together. He then had no more detention, putting civilians in danger and almost crushing Spider-Man to death. Ultimately, Sandman's antagonistic actions were mostly the result of his fear of losing his daughter.

However, when he found out that Spider-Man was really Peter Parker, Flint lost all his animosity towards him, realizing that Peter was only opposing him because of what he had unwittingly done to Ben Parker. He then explained to Peter that he never wanted to do all the harm he caused and that he fully accepted to live with it for the rest of his life, accepting that it was too late to change the past but claiming that all he has left is his daughter. After Peter forgives him, Flint made his peace with him and left, now a man who made peace with his mistakes.

Upon being transported to an alternate dimension, Flint Marko is not a very trusting person as he's very quick to jump to conclusions or escape if he feels threatened. The only thing Marko really seems to care about is his daughter, as she was the only reason he was willing to put up with the other villains and accept Peter Parker's offer to send him home. This desire to go home eventually turned to desperation as he tried to steal the Machina de Kadavus from Spider-Man without even caring about the other villains being cured.

Despite his distrusting nature, Marko did have a huge amount of respect and trust in the version of Peter Parker he fought in his reality, even going to the lengths of protecting the Spider-Man from another universe due to mistakenly thinking it was his Peter. This paid off as it was his Peter who was able to turn him back to normal before sending him home.

## Biography

Flint Marko is introduced as a down-on-his-luck blue-collar worker whose young daughter, Penny, has cancer. In an effort to support her, the unemployed Marko turns to armed robbery to pay for her cancer treatments, at the same time becoming estranged from his wife. During one such robbery, Marko and his accomplice Dennis Carradine hold up a wrestling arena and flee the scene; while trying to escape, Marko accidentally kills Ben Parker, the uncle of Peter Parker, who will later become Spider-Man. Stricken with remorse, Marko surrenders to the police, and spends several years in prison.

### Spider-Man 3

After he is released, Marko is unable to find work, and reluctantly goes back to armed robbery in order to support his family. Despite his efforts, his wife refuses to have anything to do with him and goes out of her way to make sure he has no contact with their daughter. After a holdup goes wrong, Marko runs into a gigantic chamber filled with sand at a remote testing facility. Unbeknownst to Marko, the chamber is part of an experiment to test whether sand is an effective shield against radiation.

Marko hides from the police in the pit, but is soon buried in the radioactive sand, causing Marko to be genetically blended together with the sediment. This transformation gives him the power to shapeshift at will, turn his hands into weapons, and grow hundreds of feet in size. Marko uses his new-found powers to rob numerous banks, but he is thwarted by Spider-Man, who is growing increasingly unstable as a result of the alien symbiote fused with his suit. When Spider-Man discovers that Marko killed his uncle, the enraged superhero chases him into a subway tunnel and opens a pipe, causing a massive flood of water that disintegrates Marko and washes him away. Unbeknownst to Spider-Man, however, Marko survives and regroups.

Venom later comes to Marko and forms an alliance with him in order to kill Spider-Man. After Spider-Man kills Venom with one of the New Goblin's pumpkin bombs, Marko finally learns Spider-Man's identity, apologizes to him and tells him the whole story of Ben's death. Marko states that he is not asking for forgiveness, but that he only wants Peter to understand what he has been going through. Peter forgives Marko and allows him to escape peacefully into the wind, having finally come to terms with what he has done. It is unknown what happened to Marko or his family since.

### *Marvel Cinematic Universe*

#### *Spider-Man: No Way Home*

Several years after his last meeting with his Peter, Flint fell victim to a failed Doctor Strange spell that transported him to another dimension due to his knowledge of Spider-Man's secret identity. Mistaking this world's Peter for his own, Flint aided him in defeating an alternate version of Electro, although they were both imprisoned in the Sanctum. Flint was mostly disinterested in the following events, only seeing being cured as a way home to his daughter and remaining in the form of a humanoid figure of sand rather than taking on his human form again. After the alternate Green Goblin took over Norman Osborn's body, Flint joined the other uncured villains in fleeing rather than being cured.

Sandman later joined Electro and the alternate Lizard in battling the three Spider-Man on the Statue of Liberty. After some teamwork between the three Spider-Man, a version of Sandman's version Spider-Man managed to use the device that they had created to cure Flint. Flint reverted back into his human form, staring at his hands in shock. Peter ordered him to stay put for his own safety and Flint was later returned to his own universe by Strange.

## Relationships

### Family

* Emma Marko - Ex-Wife
* Penny Marko - Daughter

### Allies

* Peter Parker/Spider-Man - Former Enemy, Former Attempted Killer, Former Attempted Victim, Friend and Savior
* Norman Osborn/Green Goblin - Situational Ally
* Otto Octavius/Doctor Octopus
* Max Dillon/Electro - Situational Enemy and Situational Ally
* Curt Connors/The Lizard
* Peter Parker/MCU Spider-Man - Temporary Enemy
* Ned Leeds
* Michelle Jones
* Stephen Strange/Doctor Strange - Former Enemy
* MCU May Parker †
* Peter Parker/Amazing Spider-Man - Temporary Enemy
* Ben Parker † - Unintentional Victim

### Enemies

* Captain George Stacy
* Harry Osborn/New Goblin † - Attempted Killer
* Mary Jane Watson
* Dennis Carradine † - Former Partner
* Edward "Eddie" Brock/Venom † - Former Accomplice (gave up on)

## Powers and Abilities

* **Sand Manipulation**: Following an incident in which he fell into a super collider, Marko gained the ability to transform his body into sand. He can will his body to be hardened, compacted, dispersed or shaped, or a combination of those qualities, an Earth manipulation of sand and rock particles. However, after the battle at Liberty Island, his mutation was undone by Spider-Man, who was able to manage to return him to normal so he could finally live a reformed life.
	+ **Superhuman Strength**: When Marko has enough sand, he could hit with many pounds of sand behind his punch.
	+ **Superhuman Durability**: Since Marko was turned into sand, his body can take less damage from conventional methods.
	+ **Superhuman Stamina**: Marko's mutation provides him with a significant increase in stamina, allowing him to fight for long periods of time.
	+ **Regenerative Healing Factor**: Since Marko was turned into sand, he can use it to heal any injuries that he has in seconds.
	+ **Transformation**: Marko's true form is a humanoid made of sand, but he can turn himself into his original form as a human, or he can turn into a giant sand creature.
	+ **Flight**: He can turn himself into a sandstorm, which enables him to fly great distances.
	+ **Self-Sustenance**: Since Marko is made of sand, he has no need of food, water, or oxygen to survive.
	+ **Shapeshifting**: Due to his human body destroyed through the process, Marko can change the color of sand. His striped shirt and cargo trousers are colored sand to make him appear as if he wears clothes, though they are sand mimicking the clothing he wore at the night of his accident since he can't take it off without shapeshifting.
	+ **Size Manipulation**: Marko is able to stretch his sand molecules, growing to double his size.
	+ **Density Manipulation**: Marko can manipulate his sand to control his density, to make himself hard as rock or thin as sand.
	+ **Intangibility**: Marko can manipulate his density to allow anyone's attacks go right through him, making him untouchable.
	+ **Sand Absorption**: Marko can absorb and use any sand along with his own.
	+ **Sand Blasts**: Marko can project sand particles outward at high speeds, in a form of sandstorm.
	+ **Weapon Manifestation**: Marko can mold his arms and hands into shapes, such as a mace or a sledgehammer.
	+ **Expert Combatant:** Due to serving time in jail, Flint is able to defend himself well. Even before his transformation. His fighting skills gave Peter Parker a hard time during their run-ins.

## Trivia

* He is the only villain in the Sam Raimi *Spider-Man* trilogy who doesn't die. He is also the third villain in the films to be redeemed.
* Just like Eddie Brock/Venom, his alias "Sandman" was never mentioned in the film. However, in the film when the news was broadcasted to the citizens of New York, the news reporter called Flint "The Sandman". He was always known as Marko. Furthermore, Flint Marko is his actual name in the film, whereas in the comics it is an alias, and his real name is William Baker.
* In the video game adaptation of *Spider-Man 3*, Sandman's fate is very different to his fate in the movie. At the end of the game, a cop appears with Sandman's daughter, and he is reunited with his daughter, and after that, he apologizes to Spider-Man for what happened. It was unknown if he was arrested by the cop after this. Additionally, he only helps Eddie Brock kill Spider-Man because Brock kidnapped his daughter, unlike the film where he was willing to help him.
* On May 4, 2007, while promoting the film on *The Tonight Show with Jay Leno*, Thomas Haden Church revealed that he broke three knuckles during the subway scene where he swings to punch Spider-Man and ends up punching a chunk of the wall away. Church said that the effects crew had told him that the brick in the middle was fake while the upper and lower ones were real. Unfortunately, the foam brick had not actually been put in place yet, and when Sam Raimi yelled 'action', Church spun around and punched the real brick on the first take.
* It took three years to create the visual effects required to portray the Sandman's powers. To understand the dynamics of sand, various experiments were conducted with sand (launching sand at stunt men, splashing the stuff around and pouring it over ledges). Sand sculptors were also consulted for advice.
* Real sand was used for Sandman, except when characters were being buried or covered in sand. Since real sand would have been a possible hazard for such scenes, ground up corncobs were used instead.
* The first shot of the Sandman forming took roughly 6 months to create.
* Church was offered the role of Sandman on the strength of his performance in the film *Sideways* (2004). He accepted the part despite the fact that there was no script.
* To prepare for his role as the Sandman, Thomas Haden Church worked out for 16 months, losing ten pounds of fat and gaining 28 pounds of muscle. He based his performance on misunderstood monsters, like the title character from *The Golem* (1920), Frankenstein's Monster (1931) and King Kong (1933).
* According to composer Christopher Young, the Sandman's theme was composed with two contrabass saxophones, two contrabass clarinets, two contrabass bassoons and eight (very low) French horns to describe Sandman as "heavy and aggressive." Venom's theme was meant to make him sound "vicious and demonic" and used eight French horns.
* A scene of Spider-Man battling a giant Sandman at a construction site was previously done in the cartoon *Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends: Spider-Man: Unmasked!* (1983).
* The union between Venom and Sandman originally had Venom just offering the cash Sandman needs to save his daughter in exchange for helping him kill Spider-Man, but during the battle, Sandman's daughter would come and tell her father that she could not be cured and was going to die, and wanted to die with her father being a good man, not a criminal.
* In other earlier scripts of the film, Lizard and Electro were planned to be the antagonists, rather than Venom and the Sandman. However, the Lizard appeared in *The Amazing Spider-Man* (2012) while Electro appeared in *The Amazing Spider-Man 2* (2014).
* In *No Way Home*, archival footage of Thomas Church from *Spider-Man 3* was used for his human appearance, which appeared very briefly in the film.
* Of all the villains that appeared in *No Way Home*, Sandman is the only one who wasn't a main antagonist of a previous Spider-Man movie installment.
* Sandman is possibly the only of the five villains from *No Way Home* who wasn't transported to the MCU during the events of his movie. He seemed to be transported to the MCU some years after the events of *Spider-Man 3* because he asked MCU Spider-Man if he remembered him thinking he was his own Spider-Man.
* Flint's fate after the events of Spiderman 3 are unclear, as he hasn't died or suffered any consequence to anyone's knowledge. If he was still alive and a free man during the events of No Way Home, he probably was pulled from the original timeline in his universe, which means he would have been sent back to his original timeline.