its hands. The monster still wanted to finish Superman (to which he also seemed to have a mental link), but by the time it reached the hospital, Superman awoke re-powered. The Sand Superman showed up and teamed with Superman. Together they both attacked the monster who, terrified, escaped back to the park and left Earth via the dimensional portal. Alone again with Superman, the Sand Superman announced that he was going to kill Superman so that he could be the only Man of Steel (see Quote). I Ching, fortunately, arrived on the scene and magically hypnotized both into seeing how a fight between the two might turn out. Both saw the fight destroying Earth and Superman, believing that he had really destroyed Earth, was devastated. The Sand Superman realized that it had no right to claim Superman's body or soul and thus agreed to return home to Quarrm. It left through the portage with half of Superman's powers (Superman refused to take the other half back after having seen the destruction of Earth during the hypnotism) and closed the portal from the Quarrm side. Long after that, he was seen in an issue of DC Collector's Edition: Superman vs. Shazam. The Sand Superman was impersonating the real Man of Steel and attacked Captain Marvel, while Black Adam pretended to be Marvel and ambushed Superman, all to bring about a battle between the two heroes. Presumably the Sand Superman returned to the Quarrm Dimension after the matter was settled. He has probably not been seen since. After this history, more kryptonite rained down on Earth later on, so the effect was only temporary. Description The Sand Superman resembled Superman himself more and more the more power it absorbed. At first it was a pile of sand with humanoid features, but near the end it had acquired colors in its densely packed sand so that it really resembled Superman. The only real difference was that the Sand Superman had a very different and alien body language and that his skin and suit resembled rough sandpaper. Everywhere Superman had colors in his suit, it had too; it even had blue eyes of blue sand and black sand for hair. The entire appearance was quite uncanny and people who saw it often commented how strange 'Superman' looked. All in all, it had the exact appearance of Superman himself, but with a very sand-like composition.