Wesley Dodds was born in the 1910's to a wealthy investor, Edward Dodds, and his wife. He spend a good deal of his childhood in the orient, learning martial arts, philosophy and origami. After his father died, he became plagued with nightmares of criminals. This drove him to invest his fortune into making many sedative and hypnotic gasses. He bought several gas masks and donning a suit and trench coat, became The Sandman. 

On his first case, chasing the serial killer the Tarantula, he met Dian Belmont, both as the Sandman and as Dodds. She was the daughter of DA Larry Belmont. Soon they fell in love, and later Dodds entrusted his secret to her. After that they became partners in work, and in love. 

In 1940, Wesley Dodds became one of the founding members of the Justice Society. After battling the evil Karkull, All JSA members absorbed some of it's life energy, causing them to age more slowly than regular humans. While Dodds was out of the country, Dian Belmont donned the Sandman costume to battle Nazis and was shot. Presumed dead, she turned out to be very much alive. Afterwards Dodds modified his costume to a more Super heroic Gold and Purple. He also adopted Sandy Hawkings, Dian's nephew, who became his side-kick Sandy. 

Several years later, Sandy was caught in a terrible, disfiguring experiment to in which Dodds was partially to blame. Out of shame, Dodds sedated the monster that was Sandy and kept him in his basement. Many years later, the Sandman emerged from retirement in his original costume and re-joined the Justice Society. Soon after, Sandy escaped and only the Justice Society and the Justice League together could subdue him. After this, Sandy was send to several research labs in order to be cured. Years later, Sandman managed to revert sandy to his original, teen-aged form, and they returned to crime fighting, as a team.  

During the 1980's following 2 strokes, the Sandman was returned to semi retirement. He and the rest of the JSA were severely changed by Extant during Zero Hour. Dodds was one of the luckier ones, he was only aged severely. Recently though, he has helped Jack Knight solve a murder. He and his nobel prize winning wife, Dian, still live in New York City. 

The Sandman, in detective skills is second only to the Batman. He uses a gas gun to put criminals to sleep. After he catches criminals, he places poems written in Origami for the police to find as a "calling card". He is a highly skilled fighter as well. Also Dodds is a great scientist and has his entire fortune to draw from.