SPIDER-MAN: THE VENOM FACTOR - Part Three

Written by Diane Duane

The Plot: Spider-Man attracts the monster with a radioactive isotope he snatched from the ESU lab, but is unable to capture him. After talking to MJ, Spider-Man investigates the area near Penn Station, where several homeless have suffered radiation sickness. Later, Venom finds the monster in the city's subway tunnels but is also unable to defeat him. Spider-Man manages to locate Hobgoblin's underground lab, but once again, Venom's interference allows Hobgoblin to escape. Spider-Man decides to find the monster again and use its innate attraction to radiation to locate Hobgoblin's bomb. When he does find Hobgoblin, he discovers Venom's already tracked him and begun the battle. Spider-Man knocks out Hobgoblin, as the ravenous monster eats the plutonium out of the bomb. It explodes, leaving behind tiny black aliens. Venom escapes in the confusion, and Spider-Man returns to the surface to hand off Hobgoblin and the aliens to SHIELD.

The Subplots: MJ is offered the role of a social worker at her second audition. When the Hobgoblin appears on television bragging about his bomb, the show's producers ask her to fly out of New York with them immediately. Concerned for Peter, she refuses, which costs her the job.

I Love the ‘90s: MJ watches an annoying purple dinosaur in the producers' waiting room television. For some reason, he's never referred to by name. Venom also runs into a group of teenage punks harassing homeless people in the subway tunnels. Two of them are heavily implied to be Beavis and Butt-Head.

Review: After barely appearing for much of the book, Venom makes his presence felt in the novel's final chapters. Duane has a decent handle on Venom, especially when the narrative switches to his first person point of view and tries to justify his relationship with the symbiote. I don't think he needs this much attention, though, especially when he shows up yet again to disrupt a Spider-Man/Hobgoblin fight and unintentionally allow the villain to escape. That's a minor complaint, though. If I have any real issues with this story, it's with the not-Venom monster who somehow manages to go the entire novel without anything approaching an origin or any kind of justification for its uncanny resemblance to Venom. The story continues to go out of its way to point out how improbable the existence of this bipedal, super-strong black creature with tentacles is, but offers no explanation outside of "Alien! Maybe!" by the novel's end.

What Duane does get right are the characters, though, and that goes a long way in a Spider-Man story. Peter and MJ feel like a real married couple, as Duane is able to balance their everyday money and domestic problems with their honest affection for one another. The numerous homeless characters, police officers, ESU students, Daily Bugle employees, etc. are also fleshed out, even if they only appear for a page or two. Duane can occasionally go off on tangents, but almost always the diversions serve to make a character more human or to create a convincing environment for the story to take place in. This is a plausible, three-dimensional world for Spider-Man to inhabit, which is why the casual dismissal of the story's monster feels so awkward. Still, it’s not enough to turn me off from the book. The Venom Factor is very enjoyable, and absolutely worth tracking down.

SPIDER-MAN: THE VENOM FACTOR - Part Two

Written by Diane Duane

The Plot: Spider-Man stakes out the Brooklyn Navy Yards, anticipating Hobgoblin will rob a nuclear submarine. When Hobgoblin does appear, Spider-Man is unable to stop him from taking an actuator, the device that triggers the atomic reaction in a fired missile. Later, as Peter Parker, he investigates with Ben Urich an alleged Venom sighting at the rail yards. That night, while searching the warehouse where the homeless man was killed, Spider-Man and Venom meet. Venom claims innocence. After Venom departs to start his own investigation, Spider-Man travels to the ESU campus, expecting that Hobgoblin will next strike its nuclear research facility. He captures Hobgoblin, but when Venom arrives to extract his own vengeance, Hobgoblin escapes in the confusion.

The Subplots: Researching a possible role as a social worker, MJ volunteers with her friend at the Third Chance homeless shelter. While talking to the homeless, she learns of numerous cases of radiation sickness.

I Love the ‘90s: Spider-Man recalls doing “duck and cover” nuclear bomb drills during school. I understand that Peter Parker was supposed to be a child of the ‘70s at this point, but was “duck and cover” still around then?

Review: Over the course of a hundred pages or so, Venom finally appears, Spider-Man has two more fights with Hobgoblin, Ben Urich makes a cameo, and MJ is given something to do. Not bad for “Middle.” Overlooking Spider-Man conveniently locating Hobgoblin so easily on two occasions, and a few more pages spent on the obvious Venom red herring, the story’s holding together well. Duane gets some material out of Spider-Man’s loss of his spider-sense, like his anxiety that it might never return, only to have it rematerialize when he thinks he’s finally caught the Hobgoblin...which of course doesn’t work out because of Venom’s stupidity. It’s a nice use of “The Ol’ Parker Luck” that doesn’t feel contrived.

Duane’s research continues to add some depth to the novel, as we discover that not only has she thoroughly investigated how a nuclear submarine works and how a dirty bomb could be made, but she also knows how a modern homeless shelter functions. Since everyone already has some idea of what a shelter is like, Duane could be excused for skimping on the details, but she’s able to provide very specific information on everything from how the food is prepared to what the job training classes are like, and her characterization skills help to humanize the volunteers and the residents. (MJ’s guilt that she would’ve never even looked these people in the eye if she wasn't researching a role is well played.) Plus, the scene actually ties in to the novel’s main plot, so it doesn’t feel as if MJ’s off in her own novella in the middle of the actual story.

SPIDER-MAN: THE VENOM FACTOR - Part One

Written by Diane Duane

The Plot: A mysterious black figure escapes from its imprisonment on a nuclear submarine. Meanwhile, Peter Parker purchases a strobe slave, and in the hopes of improving the quality of his photographs, attaches a motion sensor to it. While patrolling the city as Spider-Man, he comes across a warehouse robbery led by the Hobgoblin. After neutralizing Spider-Man’s spider-sense with a gas, Hobgoblin escapes. Later, a large black figure steals radioactive waste from a warehouse and kills a homeless man. His friend reports to the media that Venom is the killer. The next day, Peter investigates the two cases at the Daily Bugle morgue and discovers that the Consolidated Chemical Research Corporation owned both warehouses.

The Subplots: MJ is still looking for work after being fired from the soap opera Secret Hospital. Peter, meanwhile, is worried about getting a debt consolidation loan approved.

Web of Continuity: This novel was published in 1994, taking place shortly before the events of the Clone Saga.

I Love the ‘90s: Peter is still using a darkroom to develop photographs, a process the novel elucidates in great detail. He’s also concerned about buying new, expensive color film because the Daily Bugle’s front page has recently gone color. The Daily Bugle has also recently switched to a computer paste-up program that none of its employees can figure out. When Peter goes to the morgue, he discovers that the archives are now on CD-Rom, and he utilizes a crude search engine to investigate Venom's previous activities.

Not Approved By The Comics Code Authority: Kate Cushing refers to the Hobgoblin as an "ugly sonofabitch."

Review: Star Trek novelist Diane Duane wrote a loosely connected trilogy of Spider-Man/Venom novels in the ‘90s; my memory is that I enjoyed the first one, didn’t particularly care for the second, and never saw the third one on sale anywhere. On the rare occasions that I’ve encountered people discussing these novels online, Duane’s novels seem to be casually dismissed, which surprises me. Even if the second one didn’t impress me, I don’t recall it being offensively bad, just a little dull. Maybe the quality took a deeper drop with the third book, or perhaps online fans just can’t bring themselves to admit to enjoying Venom stories. Regardless, The Venom Factor starts off slow, but it has a nice hook and the story is thankfully going out of its way to establish Peter and MJ as a believable, likeable couple.

Duane demonstrates early on that she understands how to write the Parkers’ domestic life, as the first chapter opens with Peter nervously waiting at the bank, talking to an indifferent teenage employee who doesn’t know if his loan has been approved yet, and doesn’t know when the man who does know will be coming back. Peter is slightly relieved not to have any news, since he’s convinced the answer is going to be “denied.” He heads to a nearby photography store to buy supplies. His credit card is rejected, and purchasing the equipment he needs wipes out the cash in his wallet. He then spends the next few hours setting up a device that will enable his automatic camera to take better photos of himself as Spider-Man. I think he also steps in dog crap at some point during this adventure. It’s all classic Spider-Man, and Duane shows that she can handle the marriage just as well when MJ returns home, looking unusually worn after a fruitless day of auditions. Duane hits the right notes in these scenes; they’re not boring even though we have seen the Parkers deal with these problems before, and despite the seriousness of the domestic issues, the tone is never bleak or depressing. Peter and MJ’s relationship just feels real; a feeling the comic writers somehow couldn’t replicate as the ‘90s wore on.

Another impressive element of Duane’s writing is the research she’s clearly put into the book. I don’t know if she has an honest interest in photography or just read some books before writing the novel, but it’s clear she knows her stuff. Considering the plethora of Spider-Man stories that have been published over the years, it’s surprising that Peter’s interest in photography has so rarely been explored. I would be curious to know if any Spider-Man story outside of this one applied real knowledge of specific camera equipment or film supplies into the narrative. I believe that the issue Duane is trying to address, that an automatic camera would probably produce terrible photos of Spider-Man during a battle, was already addressed with a shortcut “hidden microchip” kind of solution in the comics, but it’s admirable to see her working out a plausible explanation.

She’s also done her homework on the characters, to the point that a lengthy recap of Venom’s history includes events from a series of back-up stories from early ‘90s Spider-Man annuals. Even in Marvel’s desperate bid to reprint everything Venom, I’m not sure if anyone bothered dredging up the time Venom learned about heroism in a rural truck stop. It’s a part of his history, though, and Duane puts it to use.

Now, is anyone going to believe that Venom is truly the culprit behind the murders? Of course not. Even if you’ve never read the comics, the extensive recap of the character’s history goes out of its way to emphasize his current status as an anti-hero, and to reinforce that he’s always had a twisted desire to “protect innocence.” It’s clear that some other dark monster with a prehensile tongue is stealing radioactive waste and killing people. If Duane overplays this red herring, that will get old fast. However, the Hobgoblin’s role in the story still works as a mystery, and it’s a lot of fun to see the two greatest Spider-Man villains of the 1980s in the same story. So far, everything’s working. Considering the state of the actual Spider-Man comics in 1994, this was probably a welcome relief.