"Time Runs Like Sand!"

[flint_marko]

This is from Marvel Two-In-One #86, by Tom DeFalco and Ron Wilson.


The Thing is helping Reed move some equipment, and he complains about how he should be fighting Dr. Doom or the Sandman instead. Reed recaps what happened to the Sandman when we last saw him, how he and Hydro-Man were transformed into the Mud-Thing before being destroyed by the NYPD.

The story then cuts to a downtown police laboratory, where some scientists are trying to experiment on the wet lump of sand that was the Mud Thing. They finally give up, and the remains are transported to a nearby city dumping site.





Sandman steals some clothes from a Salvation Army clothes box and roughs a guy up for some cash before heading to a bar to sort things out. The bartender sees the sand trailing behind him and recognizes him. He tries calling the cops but they don't believe him so he calls the Baxter Building. The Thing picks up, and while he doesn't believe the bartender he thinks it's a good excuse to head to the bar.

When the Thing sees Sandman at the bar he is about to attack when Sandman says that he isn't in any shape to fight and that he'll go quietly.






Sandman says how he owned New York in those days, and that no crime was too big for him. We see him robbing people, carjacking, robbing banks, ect. He says how he had a girlfriend named Marcy and that for a while he thought about settling down and going straight.

He says how he eventually ended up in the maximum security ward of Ryker's Island Prison, before finally managing to escape and, in trying to get away from the cops, headed to a part of the beach that was a military testing site. When they decide to test an experimental nuclear device, he gets bombarded by the radiation and becomes the Sandman.

Sandman says how he thought he was invincible, but how he would always lose whenever he went up against another superhero, and that he thinks he doesn't have the heart to fight anymore.





And in Marvel Two-In-One #96, the Thing is recuperating in the hospital from a battle with the Champion of the Universe. Most of the issue deals with the other superheroes protecting the hospital from the various supervillains trying to take advantage of his weakened state.




And here are two pieces of art inspired by the cover to #86:


This is by Luke McDonnell (since deleted and I can't find a larger version besides google's cache)


And this is by Rusty Shackles.

Comments

[tsunamiwombat]

Same shirt. Every day. For his whole life.

[blackruzsa]

It's magic.
Or made up of unstable molecules.
Sent back in time when the FF were having a charity drive.

[biod]

Or his family bought the shirts in bulk because they couldn't afford it any other way.

[halloweenjack]

One crate fell off the truck and went to the Markos, a different crate went to Charlie Brown's family, and yet a third went to Mo from Dykes To Watch Out For.

(Srsly, though, I can get the impulse to go with the same thing on a regular basis; I tend to wear all black when I'm off work in the non-summer months, not out of some emo-goth impulse or for the Johnny Cash reasons, but simply because I've always liked to (and I don't have to wonder if things match).