I'm not going to comment too much on the Sandman situation but I honestly can't remember what he's done of note and I don't remember what he's done lately beyond a Sinister Six appearance and at best a cameo in FFH.
Like it's all just kind of inoffensive that he just kind of blurs together into this gestalt of forgetting he exists. Like without looking at a wiki, what has he done or accomplished that made us think that Sandman needs to be hounding Spider-man? Like I don't really have much of a horse in this race though I can fully understand the frustration given my own experiences with Doctor Doom and Doctor Octopus in a needless reversion. But when something like alignment changes, doesn't this mean we give a shit or will eventually? Like who is screeching from the rooftops for Sandman to even be used as a villain? Venom and Doctor Octopus are the big names beyond whatever they puke out for Green Goblin to do, nobody is saying "PUT SANDMAN IN THIS". Now Sandman is somebodies favorite villain I'm sure and I do like him, but what necessitated the change? Or a better question being what necessitated the reversion being kept around?
If it's a visual thing, this is comics, you can have both. You can give someone the same powers, you can make an evil double through magic, you can clone him. No writer is beholden to something beyond personal preference and editorial mandate. End of the day though, does anyone care? And I don't mean does anybody care about Sandman, we do obviously. But him becoming a villain again didn't lead to an increased prominence in media, he's just a classic villain and frankly with nothing to do beyond punch Spider-man every now and again. He was in Spider-man 3, that's his biggest thing outside of being an Avengers once.
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The problem is ''career criminal who robs bank for an easy check'' comes off as both as a one dimensional and villain who provides no real stakes. it only works if you add other dimensions to it as they did with Captain Cold, they took that basic archetype and added layers to make him more interesting. The problem with that archetype is it's so generic, if you give it to a bunch of villains, they seem like the same character with different outfits and gimmicks. If Electro, Shocker, Rhino, Sandman, etc are all greedy bank-robbing villains, what sets them apart, there is where you more fleshed out characterization (which most of them besides Shocker get, but it's often forgotten over time). Who cares if Sandman robs a bank, who even likes banks that this point, heck I think a lot of people think the banks bigger crooks than the supervillains would be. What's at stake if Sandman robs a bank, the bank's insurance rate? Heck, bank robbery as a crime in decline:
https://careers.workopolis.com/advic...their-efforts/
A hacker can clean out a bank far easier than super-villain can. These supervillains would be better off making money in the drug trade at this point.
The thing that made Sandman becoming a good guy work, is that it gave him a character arc, to undo that just make Sandman into a one-dimensional bank robber who Spidey can fight while thinking about his personal problems, is pretty bad storytelling.
If you want to keep villain a villain, you an interesting reason for these guys to stay villains and the whole career criminal looking for an easy paycheck needs a lot of layers added to it to be compelling in 2020.
I feel like a lot of Spidey villains have become generic over time and some need to be more sympathetic (Sandman, Shocker, etc) and some need to be more sinister (like Mysterio).
If cool powers and fight scenes are all there is to him then that is not adequate reason to keep him a villain. Heroes can have cool fight scenes and powers and he has done nothing of notice ever since he went back to being a villain. A guy who turned his life around to do goof offers way more than another forgettable enemy.
I liked it and his face turn should've been permanent.
They've done some interesting stuff with a more ambivalent Sandman afterwards, but I think he worked better as a hero.
His power set is awesome, and he is one of the Lee/ Ditko classics, so I get why they want him as the villain, but he was special as a former bad guy.
Sincerely,
Thomas Mets
useful for a while then... well.. at least he hasn't killed anybody recently. has he?
Eh I can go either way with Sandman. He’s a simple crook...so it’s not exactly like Otto where “character development” is a way to hand wave some of his more heinous acts. I think Sandman is used best as a neutral party, he’s not evil at all like Octavius, but he’s not really good like Peter, that said he’s just a selfish person out for himself. I can see those who prefer Sandman as a villain enjoying someone overcoming and finding a clever way to handle Flint’s powerset, which is one of the more impressive powers that someone could have. Flint being so shortsighted definitely works when he’s a baddie, as if someone with more ambition had those powers it could be one of those world ending villains.
And even in some adaptations, like Ultimate Spider-Man (the animated series), he could've very well destroyed New York City all by himself if he'd been allowed to make landfall, which is why it was a good thing he ultimately reformed. Come to think of it, a lot of villains in the animated version of Ultimate Spider-Man ended up reforming and allying with Spider-Man, and in regards to what you said about the handwaving of Otto Octavius's more heinous acts, even though Otto crossed some serious lines in the final season, Peter still gave him a chance at redemption after defeating him for good in the finale. Personally, I like the idea of redeeming a lot of supervillains, as nowadays superhero-on-supervillain fights have become exercises in pointless cycles of violence that solve nothing in the long run and exhibits for superheroes' tragic inability to do lasting good for the world they live in with their abilities and resources.
The spider is always on the hunt.
A big reason that I'm against Sandman having become a villain again, apart from the reason being stupid, is that it completely undoes his character development and enforces the idea that Status Quo is God. I wonder if the people saying he's better as a villain are saying it more in hindsight, after the fact. Looking back at his time as a hero, and part of the Avengers, it was neat that he was a crook who saw a better path.
For a comparable example, look at Songbird and MACH, formerly Screaming Mimi and Beetle. Both were created to be supervillains, and were bad guys for a long time, but they made permanent heel-face turns and became legit superheroes in the 1997 Thunderbolts series, and never went back. I feel like if they suddenly became villains again, it would feel very contrived and terrible, undoing all the character development made since while invalidating a classic series.
I have enjoyed Sandman as a villain, but that doesn't excuse the dumb reason and the backtracking it took for it.
Something I'm getting tired of seeing in comics is how they almost always undo any character development to return them to square one. Last development that remained permanent were:
+ Venom finding better things to do that live obssessively with having his revenge of Spider-Man.
+ Carol Danvers becoming Captain America and not Miss Marvel.
Giving how Sandman has evolved beyond the "regular thug" status, and considering there's another villain with his powers that Marvel almost never use (Quicksand), they could leave him as a hero/anti-hero and let Quicksand take his place as villain.
For the sake of accuracy, Carol Danvers was only Captain America in Marvel Mangaverse and a Venomverse A/U. That said, I do agree that Sandman reverting to villainy, especially the way it was done, was a disgrace and they could just use Quicksand (last seen in ASM 791, by the way). I can add one more change that remained permanent, though: most superheroes in the Marvel Universe, primarily the likes of the Avengers, abandoning secret identities.
The spider is always on the hunt.
I don't see the point in him being a villain anymore, they've already exhausted that avenue. Being a hero is much more interesting.
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