Spiderman Author Gets Inside Characters’ Heads

Ann Rinaldi, move over. Diane Duane is the author of 1996. She’s written two excellent novels telling the tales of your favorite wall crawler and mine, Spiderman.

In “Spiderman: The Venom Factor,” a homeless man has been murdered and Spidy’s archenemy, Venom, is accused. Venom shows up to declare his innocence and winds up teaming with our hero to find the true killer. In the process, they work to stop Hobgoblin from blowing up the city.

In Duane’s second book, “Spiderman: The Lizard Sanction,” the Lizard (a.k.a. Dr. Curt Conners, Peter Parker’s teacher) has turned up in the Florida Everglades killing people while trying to find a cure for his mutated condition. Some crook is using mind control on the Lizard, so he commits crimes for him.

Venom turns up again, in order to kill Spidey and eliminate the Lizard, who threatens the lives of innocent people (as Venom sees it),

Also, keep an eye out for “Spiderman: The Octopus Agenda,” due out soon.

These books offer the chance to get inside the characters’ minds like no comic book has ever been able to do. We actually get to experience the love between Peter Parker (Spiderman) and his wife, Mary Jones. They love each other, they miss each other, they fight about his extracurricular activities. And she complains when he forgets the Woolite on the way home from fighting Venom.

Duane seems to actually like Venom, since he’s in both books. I couldn’t be happier. She does an excellent job of capturing Venom’s twisted ways; he isn’t so much a villain but a multi-faceted character.

All we need now is a book about the Vulture…