By the next day Peter has fixed his mask and is telling his Aunt May that he has to go see Mr. Jamison about something after school. I'm going to point out the fact that Aunt May takes time to mention that J.J.J is the publisher of the Daily Bugle and Now Magazine. She makes a point to mention both, and the reason is because I do believe that ol' Smiling Stan made a boo-boo. It isn't the first he made with Spider-Man either. See, in issue #2 of Spider-Man, J. Jonah Jamison went from being the owner the Daily Bugle newspaper to being the owner of Now Magazine. Trust me it was a mistake, because the building went from being the Daily Bugle building, to Now Magazine Building, to the J. Jonah Jamison building. To save this flub, they decided to make him the owner of both publications, and eventually Now Magazine faded off into obscurity. Just thought I'd toss that out there. You know for everybody to share at the water cooler at work. Because, you know, it's funny..... Fuck I need to get out of my apartment.

Just before Peter leaves for the day, Aunt May insists that Peter take an umbrella with him and asks him to promise not to exert himself. With a dodding old maid

like Aunt May saying shit like that to him, it's any wonder how Peter can function socially in any way, let alone somehow managing to talk to a girl and convince a bombshell red head to marry him in later years.

We then cut back to the Daily Bugle building where J. Jonah Jamison has showed up for work that morning. What happens is pretty amusing in itself, Jonah sits in his chair to find that it's seat has been coated with webbing and how his pants are stuck to the chair. He orders Betty Brant to get his spare pare of trousers (who exactly keeps a spare pair of pants at work?) Peter ends up bringing them in because he tried to ask Mr. Jamison for an advance on his next payment, which is flat out refused.

Peter then goes to class and is made fun of by Flash Thompson for bringing an umbrella to school on a clear day, then has to turn down Liz Allen when she finally asks him out on a date. Then he gets scolded in class for not paying attention. I have to admit that Pete is taking a lot of shit from other people, if this was anybody else they probably would be looking into gun ownership and coming up with the details as to why everyone "raped" their soul and writing them down on his very own Myspace page so as to insure the maximum possible exploitation by the media after setting in motion "yet another tragic story."

At this time the Sandman is once again eluding the police, as he's making his escape he happens to spot the very high school that Peter Parker attends and decides to hide out there, believing that the police would never think of looking for him there. Because you know, the police wouldn't warn anybody in the area that a dangerous criminal is on the loose, let alone a school for innocent teenagers. And you know, the police totally wouldn't even THINK of checking the high school, nope, there aren't any bright innocent potential hostages there. Upon entering the school, the only person Sandman sees is Peter Parker, taking bottles to the boiler room for the science teacher. In the boiler room Peter is told by the janitor to leave the bottles around, he'll get to them once he's finished adjusting the new king-sized vacuum cleaner (PLOT POINT!)

And if any of you are like me, you're probably really disappointed when they turn away from the riveting plot involving a janitor and his thankless job, just because they have to go back to the Sandman. Sandy ducks into

a class room that just happens to be full of students, a teacher, and the principal. And for whatever reasons, the Sandman decides that he wants to force the principal of the school to give him a diploma since he never got one. The principal refuses to do so because he's deciding that it was morally wrong.

You know, for the head of an educational institution, this guy is pretty fucking stupid. I'd figure that he'd be bright enough that when some crazy criminal who can turn into fucking sand comes barging into a classroom and threatens the lives of everyone in it demands that you give him a high school diploma, you'd be smart enough to fucking give it to him.

But before Sandman can punch out the principal, Spider-Man happens to appear and does battle with Sandman. This goes on for a bunch of pages, and on and on and on. In the mighty Marvel tradition of course the two characters speak and/or think in paragraph length conversation in each panel which makes you wonder just how long these battles carry on.

Finally things lead to the boiler room of the school, where Spider-Man tricks the Sandman into turning into sand particles and sucking them up in the vacuum (who would have seen that coming huh?) But then Spidey realizes that during the battle he forgot to set up his camera to take pictures that he can sell to the Daily Bugle as Peter Parker. His solution? Setting up his camera and throwing sand from the fire bucket in the air and jumping through it.

I suppose he's trying to pull off the illusion that he was fighting the Sandman and each of his punches turned him into sand. Spidey's logic for taking these photos is that it's morally okay because it's a reenactment of what just happened and him taking these pictures is like a re-take in a film. I suppose he's right, if re-takes of a film involve no budget value.

Outside the school the police is holding the public back. At that moment J. Jonah Jamison shows up and starts demanding that the police arrest both Sandman and Spiderman. Spiderman shows up with the vacuum cleaner with the trapped Sandman. But decides to keep his distance because he figures that they'll be able to grab him and pull his mask off, he lowers the vacuum and makes an escape, quickly changing back into Peter Parker. He then runs into Jamison and sells him the pictures of the "fight".

Feeling like his day just got better, Peter tries to get his date with Liz Allen, which backfires, and when he finally decides to strike back at Flash Thompson realizes that he could really hurt Flash with his spider strength and backs off, making everyone think he's a coward. On his way home he hears the people on the street all talk about how they don't like Spiderman. The story ends on a down note with Peter standing in his room in his Spider-Man costume whining about why people don't like him.

Not exactly the worst Spider-Man story ever (there are a lot of candidates that are much worse than this one.) but with a character like Sandman, you have to sit and wonder exactly how lame kids from the 60's must have been if they though the fucking Sandman was an exciting character. He was a guy in a green sweater that could get easily defeated on a rainy day for christ sakes!

On top of all that, the Sandman fought Spider-Man only one more time before he jumped on the Fantastic Four flag ship for the longest time. During most of the 60's and part of the 70's Sandman was mostly a Fantasic Four villain, working a member of the Frightful Four let by the Wizard. If you thought the Sandman was lame when he first appeared he only got worse. During his FF days he was given a special suit that allowed him to inject shit like oil and glue into his own sand to "enhance" his abilities, if you ask me it all sounds fucking stupid. If that weren't enough he couldn't even turn his suit into sand either, so he'd always have his costume left behind more times than not. What a stupid fucking movie.

Anyway, if you're interested in reading the first appearance of the Sandman, check out Essential Spider-Man volume 1, or if you prefer you're comic books from the 60's reprinted in full digitally remastered color (because you know, you have to have the maximum quality to reproduce those old primary color-only coloring schemes) on high quality paper for a ridiculous amount of money, pick up the Amazing Spider-Man Omnibus.