Peter Parker: Spider-Man #56
Reborn Part 1
On a rainy day, Peter Parker resigns himself to the duty of mending his costume in the bad weather.[1] Deciding to put on the television as background noise while he works, he puts it on a channel where a self-help guru is giving a lengthy monologue about how people work themselves to the point where they completely break down. At that same moment at Jones Beach, the Sandman is suddenly reborn in the form of an infant baby deep below the sand.[2] While back in Manhattan, Peter Parker catches himself almost signing up for a self-help seminar taking place on Jones Beach and figures he’s just going stir crazy. While on the beach a fully grown hulking version of the Sandman emerges from the beach, severing the umbilical cord that had him connected to the beach. A short time later, a police officer comes across a baby version of the Sandman playing in the sand. The officer tells the boy that he can’t be out alone in the rain when he notices the boy’s hand is in the shape of a shovel. That’s when the hulking version of the Sandman arrives and scares the officer away.
By this time, Spider-Man has finished mending his costume and is out web-slinging. He happens upon some locals listening to a police scanner and when reports about the Sandmen on Jones Beach, he decides to head that way. When he arrives he sees the larger Sandman with the baby version of himself and thinks the Sandman has kidnapped a child. When he tries to attack Sandman, his foe holds him off and explains that he thinks the child is actually himself.
While Spider-Man is trying to puzzle out this situation, a group of police officers have come across a massive egg in another section fo the beach. To their surprise, it hatches and a deformed version of the Sandman emerges from within and starts attacking the officers. At the same time, Spider-Man has taken the other Sandman and his infant self to get ice cream while they figure out what they should do. Baby Sandman suggests they find his father, prompting the older Sandman to tell his younger self that their father left a long time ago and they also no longer speak with his mother because they have been too busy doing grown-up things.[3] That’s when they catch a news report about the other Sandman’s attack on police on the ice cream shop’s television.
Racing to the scene, they find the ruined squad cars but no sign of the third Sandman. Spider-Man suspects that the beach is spitting out different versions of the Sandman and wonders what they’ll encounter next. That’s when a female version of the Sandman emerges from the water.
Recurring Characters
Spider-Man, Sandman
Continuity Notes
Peter briefly considers having his Aunt May mend his costume but doesn’t want to her to worry about how often he gets hurt as Spider-Man. At the time of this story, Aunt May had just recently learned that Peter is Spider-Man in Amazing Spider-Man (vol. 2) #35.
The Sandman has been going through a lot of changes recently. First, he had trouble keeping his form together after Venom ate a chunk of his body in Peter Parker: Spider-Man #16. He eventually gave up trying to keep himself together and was washed away in Peter Parker: Spider-Man #22. The Sandman resurfaced recently in Peter Parker: Spider-Man #42-43 where he attempted to reform himself by absorbing a number of vapid musicians into his body, this failed.
Marvel Two-in-One #86 and Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man Annual #1 detail the Sandman’s upbringing and reveal that William Baker’s father was a deadbeat who abandoned his family and usually spent his time in-and-out of jail.
