Click to enlarge

William Baker was born in Queens, New York. At the age of three, he is abandoned by his father and forced to live in poverty with his mother, who works as a cleaning lady for a meager salary, and as a result, succumbs to alcoholism. Because she could not provide luxuries for her son, she sometimes takes him to Coney Island beach, where he relishes creating sand sculptures. He also enjoys sculpting and working with sand in school, where he is encouraged by his teacher, Miss Flint, on whom he has a crush.

He is bullied in school by a boy named Vic and his two other friends at school, until he learns how to fight, using a technique in which he uses his opponents’ motion against them, "slipping through their fingers like sand". After this, Vic and the other two bullies become his friends all the way through high school, during which he channels his anger through football, and adopts the nickname "Flint", both because it sounds imposing and because it reminds him of Miss Flint. He also turns to theft.

After Vic incurs a large debt to the mob, he begs his friend to throw a football game in order to pay off the debt. Flint does so, and his coach throws him off the team, telling him that he would never accomplish anything. Flint beats up the coach, and is expelled from school, after which he turns to a life of crime, and soon finds work as a mob enforcer. He becomes involved in more and more illegal activity, and gradually develops into a violent, bitter man. Eventually he ends up imprisoned on Ryker's Island, where he meets his father, Floyd Baker. He befriends his father, but doesn't reveal who he is, giving only his nickname, Flint, and a false surname, Marko, inspired by his former coach’s taunts about "making a mark" on the world, and which would become his regular alias. (He also changes his name to prevent his mother from discovering that her son had become a criminal.) Marko spends years in and out of jail, which is only made bearable only by the presence of his father. After Floyd is released from prison, Marko decides to escape.

Immediately, he flees to a nuclear testing site on a beach near Savannah, Georgia where he comes into contact with sand that had been irradiated by an experimental reactor. His body and the radioactive sand bond, and Marko's molecular structure is altered into an organic sand/dirt-like substance that could transform any part or all of his body into sand. Impressed, he adopts the name Sandman to match his new powers.

Read all about it! Marvel Comics' most famous heroes and villains are now available in a unique collection of authorized figurines. Each figurine is accompanied by a unique fact-based magazine that tells you everything you need to know about the featured character.

* Each figurine stands about 9 cm tall (1/24)