Though Sandlin's interest in graphic arts arose in Belfast as he pored over the now classic comic book art of Jack Kirky and Will Elder, his expertise in printmaking developed in Birmingham, where he completed a bachelor's degree in fine arts at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, in 1979. He moved to New York a year later and found employment printing artists lithographs at Styria Studio before taking a teaching position at the School of Visual Arts. His acquaintance with another instructor at SVA, Art Spielgelman, facilitated his push into bookmaking. Sandlin's earliest titles include Land of 1,000 Beers (self-published 1989), Burning Ring of Fire (Nexus Press, 1993), and Rapture of the Deaths of Desire (self-published, 1994). In 1995, he began his current series of books, A Sinner'