First Appearance of Sandman: Amazing Spider-Man #4 & DC

Marvel's Sandman, the Spider-Man villain Flint Marko, first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #4, cover-dated September 1963, created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko (Wikipedia). The same issue has the first appearance of Betty Brant (PriceCharting).

DC has used the name for several characters, each with its own first issue (Wikipedia):

• Wesley Dodds: New York World's Fair Comics #1 (April 1939), by Gardner Fox and Bert Christman; the first DC character called the Sandman.
• Garrett Sanford: The Sandman #1 (December 1974), by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby.
• Hector Hall: took the role in Infinity, Inc. #50 (May 1988).
• Dream, also called Morpheus: Neil Gaiman's The Sandman #1, cover-dated January 1989 and released November 29, 1988. The series ran 75 issues to March 1996.
• Death: Dream's sister first appeared in The Sandman #8 (August 1989), a key issue of its own.

PriceCharting values for The Amazing Spider-Man #4 (1963), retrieved September 25, 2026:

• Ungraded: $612.69 (about one sale a week)
• CGC 4.0: $1,499.08
• CGC 6.0: $3,075.00
• CGC 8.0: $6,101.26
• CGC 9.2: $25,667.98 (about one sale a year)
• CGC 9.8: $89,807.55 (marked rare)

The jump from 8.0 to 9.2 is more than four times. Early Amazing Spider-Man issues have been reprinted many times, so confirm the 1963 date in the indicia before using these figures.

PriceCharting values retrieved September 25, 2026:

• The Sandman #1 (1989): $62.50 ungraded, $114.84 in CGC 8.0, $126.97 in CGC 9.2, $285.70 in CGC 9.8 (about one 9.8 sale a week)
• The Sandman #8 (1989), first Death: $37.00 ungraded, $68.00 in CGC 9.2, $292.22 in CGC 9.8

For both, most of the value sits in 9.8; grading a raw copy only pays if it could come back 9.8.

Flint Marko got his power to turn his body into sand from an accident with an experimental reactor near Savannah, Georgia; water is his main weakness. He was a founding member of the Frightful Four and a member of the Sinister Six, and later reformed into an antihero who served as an Avengers reserve member. Thomas Haden Church played him in Spider-Man 3 (2007) and again in Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) (Wikipedia). See the Sinister Six page for the team's first issue.

Photograph the front cover straight on, then the indicia (the small print on the first page or inside cover with the title, issue number and date). ComicLens reads the title, issue number and cover from the photo, matches the likely issue with a confidence indicator you can correct by hand, and shows a reference price range that moves with the grade you pick. Include the cover date and price box in the photo; a modern barcode or a reprint note in the indicia points to a later edition. There are free scans every day; the range is a reference estimate, not an appraisal or an offer.

Research and drafting were assisted by AI and checked line by line against the sources listed on this page. Prices are the figures shown by the named source on the date given; they change with the market, and a grade that trades about once a year can move a lot on a single sale.