Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon.
***
This week in 1972, humanity was about to wave goodbye to the moon, as the last-ever [so far] manned mission to that globe touched down and the Selenites breathed a sigh of relief that their underground city had, once more, remained undetected by the unsuspecting peoples of Earth.
But you know what was detected, that week?
Issue #11 of the UK's hottest new comic!
Elsewhere, Spider-Man's still striving to win his first-ever fight with the Sandman.
And the Fantastic Four are still out to thwart the will of Dr Doom in their first-ever clash with him.
As if that's not enough for us, we also get a four-page Lee/Ditko feature that reveals the Secrets of Spider-Man.
And, by some means, we can all get to be a Marvel editor!
But the big news is that, at last, after eleven issues, the book has finally stopped going on about that poster!
Correct me if I'm mistaken, but didn't Spider-Man defeat the Sandman in their first battle by sucking him up with a vacuum cleaner?
ReplyDeleteM.P.
He certainly did, MP.
ReplyDeleteIf the Fantastic Four or the Hulk had a vacuum cleaner handy, they coulda saved a lotta time.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I always liked that guy. I particularly enjoyed his titanic team-up with Blastarr, back in the classic Lee-Kirby days.
And then Marvel had to go and add a tragic element to him. They sure knew how to take the fun outta everything.
I'm not lookin' to read Dostoevsky here, is all I'm saying.
M.P.
Yeah, I appreciated Sandman as a villain back in the day. I liked when the Frightful Four would pop-up. Trapster, Wizard, Sandman and (insert 4th member) played well off each other, usually a fun story.
ReplyDeleteMP, KILLRAVEN -
ReplyDeleteSome of my greatest joys reading comics involved SANDMAN and FRIGHTFUL FOUR back in the early 70s.
Won't re-hash it all, lol, but CHRISTMAS and SANDMAN are inexorably linked in my mind via MARVEL TEAM-UP #1. Sandy's on the run, trying to pay his ailing mom a visit at Christmas time. Ultimately he escapes SPIDERMAN and TORCH by escaping down the bathroom drain at her house.
(They left him time to say hello to her and then use the bathroom. Is that the only time a marvel character visited the head???)
Of course the big NO PRIZE situation is that Spidey notes that a "few grains" of Sandy were left in the sink. I think some years earlier REED RICHARDS had advised the FF only needed to capture "just one grain" of Sandy to disable him?
MCSCOTTY and STEVE - Belated thanks for the info on BEATLES at TOP OF THE POPS!!!
ReplyDeleteI did a little googling after reading about and seeing the 11 second silent clip and apparently there has now been found a 75 second silent clip. The owner went looking for it after hearing about the 11 second clip. Alas, no sound either.
https://www.nme.com/news/music/full-tape-beatles-only-top-of-the-pops-performance-found-attic-2503011
Charlie - I think that might have been one particular 'brain grain' rather than just any grain. If I'm wrong then an alternative answer is that the grains in the sink weren't part of Sandman but just some random sand he'd trodden in that day (and he does turn up on the beach at the start of that story).
ReplyDeletePerhaps the Sandman's brain is in every particle. Theoretically, he could regrow.
ReplyDeleteJust like DNA. You could, theoretically, grow a new Charlie or Dangermash from say, a single cell from either.
I'm not sure that's a good idea at all. Given their individual temperaments, it would likely create a couple Frankenstein monsters, but let's go deeper. Follow me, friends, into the mystical world of subatomic physics, where the laws of Newtonian physics break down.
Quantum nonlocality.
I don't understand it, and neither should you. I didn't get past high school math. But if the implications are that sub-atomic particles are doing things we don't understand and haven't given consent to, then perhaps you could create an entire universe out of one atom.
Like a template. Like DNA.
I'm worried about these sub-atomic particles. They could turn on us at any moment.
M.P.
Watch out for those fundamental particles M.P. - you can't trust anything that can be in more than one place at a time.
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid you are mistaken about Sandman. dangermash is correct, as there is a key particle of sand that contains his conscious mind - Sandman's I mean, not dangermash's (so far as I'm aware anyway - iirc dm does have A-level physics, so you never know what kind of experiments he might performed on himself).
Anyway, so long as Sandman retains that 'brain grain', he can lose sand.
-sean
So, everyone impressed by the newest superhero then?
ReplyDeletewww.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/dec/15/trump-mocked-superhero-digital-card-collection
Brilliant, eh?
-sean
Sean, I've already bought 200 of them. I can't wait for Jacob Rees-Mogg to do the same.
ReplyDeleteSean, MP, Dangermash, Killraven and Charlie, I think trying to make sense of Sandman's powers is the pathway to madness. I mean, how did he even get his sand particles to move when they weren't attached to him? Did each of them have little legs? Did he have telekinetic powers? For that matter, in the first Spider-Man annual, it was established that he has to breathe. Why? He's made of sand.
Fair point on Sandman, Steve, but you have to admit its still easier to make sense of him than Jacob Rees-Mogg.
ReplyDelete-sean
You're right Steve, "madness" indeed!
ReplyDeleteI always thought of Sandman's grains having a unique attractiveness to each other. Much like the Terminator in T2 when his liquid metal would be separated then come back together.
See MADNESS!
So many ways to defeat Sandman. Hoover him up, turn him to glass, wash him away in a stream, isolate the brain grain, let him suffocate himself by trapping you both in an airtight container. Was there a time when he got mixed up with some sort of gluey gunk too, or am I thinking of someone else? It's got me thinking. What other ways could writers find to defeat him?
ReplyDeleteMaybe he could be dehydrated? If all the water were sucked out of his sand, would he just be stuck in a powdery form and unable to reconstitute himself? You can't build castles out of dry sand.
yrc Sean
So if Sandy loses a brain grain he becomes insane in the membrane? How poetic...
ReplyDeleteAnyone know the issue REED RICHARDS tells them to capture a grain of sand? I'm trying to recapture my child hood and see what i was reading, lol.
Charlie:
ReplyDelete"To see a world in a grain of sand..." (Blake)
If that wasn't the story's title, it should have been!
Phillip
Sean:
ReplyDeleteYes, Trump’s Pretend Trading Cards are ridiculous and fugly. They also sold out in less than 24 Hours at a hundred buck a pop, netting him approximately Four Million Dollars. Barnum was right — there’s one born every minute.
Phillip:
That’s a great title for a Sandman story. Knowing Stan’s taste in story titles, I’m surprised he never used ‘Like Sands Through The Hourglass…’
b.t.
Let's put aside Trump for a moment (forever would be better) but why would somebody pay for a "digital image" at all?
ReplyDeleteYou can read comic books for free online, novels, listen to music, etc. I assume if it's terribly important to see Donald dressed up in various costumes, you could just google it.
For the record, I DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHY SOMEONE WOULD WANT TO DO THAT.
Sean, I think those numbers are fake. Probably phony. Look who we're talking about here. Trump once bullied the RNC into buying up thousands of copies of a book written by his retarded son, Don Jr., in order to get it on the New York Times bestseller list.
The swindle continues, to paraphrase Johnny Rotten.
M.P.
I meant to address b.t., not Sean, in that last comment.
ReplyDeleteMy apologies, b.t., I was replying to what you wrote. I just kinda went into automatic there.
M.P.
I don't really see the point of NFTs either M.P.
ReplyDeleteI get the idea of digital capitalism taking the notion of ownership to its ultimate conclusion, in a reification of pure exchange value - the only thing that distinguishes the 'original' that you have from everyone else's copy is that you paid for it (and hopefully someone else will want to pay you more at a future date, so they can make that claim) - but so what?
Hard to see that bubble lasting too long.
All the same, I don't see any reason to doubt those cards sold out in less than 24 hours. Perhaps I'm just naive - hey, I even thought Biden got more votes in 2020 (; - but it doesn't seem that far fetched to think there are 45,000 people (assuming the maximum, and that no-one bought several cards) dumb enough to give Trump money.
-sean
dangermash, I agree, Sandman's powers are ridiculous. So much so, they surely must have come up with the name first. Lee or Ditko probably heard Roy Orbison on the radio that month and thought 'Sandman' sounded comic-booky - or maybe they just decided to help themselves to an old, defunct name (see also: Daredevil) - and then had to figure out the rest.
ReplyDeleteSo what does this Sandman do then, what are his powers?
Well, with a name like that, obviously he turns into sand! You know, sand that can move about and do stuff.
Er...ok Stan, if you say so, you're the boss.
-sean