I used to read a lot more than I do now, I think. Or, at least, I used to finish the books I got. When I was a kid, getting a new book was a fairly exciting prospect. There used to be a place called Media Play that would sell books, CDs, VHS (and, later, DVDs), movie posters, toys, and other '90s ephemera.
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| Man, look at the colors. They're almost as vibrant as the pants I wore back then. |
The closest Media Play to me was in south Orem, about fifteen minutes away, depending on the speed of my 1987 Chrysler LeBaron. But before I could drive, it was one of my primary destinations whenever I got my allowance. I remember the first time I saw a Spider-Man novel, a "Spectacular New Novel", according to the blurb at the top of the dust jacket. It was
Spider-Man: The Venom Factor by Diane Duane.
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| I loved this book. According to this site, it was published in 1994. |
I remember being shocked at the cover--it intrigued me (because it had Spider-Man on it), but I thought that Venom's face was...I don't know...bleeding, or something? At any rate, I was eleven and a half, so my sense of what made for good cover art pretty much consisted of having dragons or Spider-Man on it, so this book--tacky, clashing colors, nonsensical design notwithstanding--immediately grabbed me. But the thing was, this sucker was a hardback. A hardback! The sticker price was a whopping $19.95, not to mention the impossible to calculate tax on top of that. Okay, so maybe twenty bucks doesn't seem like a big deal, but there are a couple of salient points you ought to bear in mind: 1) It was 1994. According to this
random website I found (that must be true because I'm too lazy to verify it), this book would cost me almost $32 nowadays. 2) I was
eleven. What eleven year old could swing by a store, snag a
thirty dollar book, and be like, "Meh. Nbd. It's Spider-Man, so it's worth it"? No eleven year old could do that, unless that kid's parents were as negligent in the teaching of hard work as they were rich.
Anyway, I saw this book and, as an added bonus, there was a
trading card glued into a plastic holder on the inside of the cover. That was it, man. I was sold. How could I say no to a limited edition trading card? (When I got home with the book, I tried to peel the plastic holder out of the book, inadvertently bending the card horrendously and essentially ruining it before I even got it out of its packaging. My point: I was dumb.)
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| I'm almost positive this is what the card looked like, minus the book stuff outside of it. If you skipped the parenthetical stuff in the paragraph above, then this picture doesn't make sense and you've now wasted your time reading this sentence. |
Everything about this book was exactly what I had always wanted a Spider-Man book to be. Firstly, I was intimidated by comic book stores, and though I wanted to read comics, I didn't know where to start. Additionally, buying one meant buying another, and my resources were limited. (For such reasons, refer to earlier paragraphs, or remember that I was eleven.) So seeing a book, which was self-contained (though there were hints that it was part of a trilogy!)
but had some great interior illustrations (by Ron Lim) meant that I could get the continuity that I wanted without having to rush around, finding every issue in an arc.
I read the book in a matter of days, then promptly modeled all of my writing after Duane's. I traced the dimensions of Ron Lim's chapter illustrations for my own Spider-Man fanfic. I tried to write with as much attention to detail as Duane did. I reread this book not too long ago, and while it has its silly parts--and some poor editing--on the whole it's one of the better Spider-Man novels I've read. In a lot of ways, this book became the template for me as an early writer.
Since then, I've purchased an entire shelf worth of Spider-Man novelizations. They're not as popular as they once were, and my own interest (and increased buying power) has put me into the trades much more heavily. Nevertheless,
The Venom Factor and the rest of its Spidey brethren sit nearby, leaving nostalgic webs as I glance over their worn spines. Indeed, they're closer to my writing desk than almost any other part of my collection (Shakespeare is closer to my reading chair). Major swaths of my childhood and early teenage years were enveloped in those now-fading pages, including family vacations, procrastinated homework, and deferred interactions with friends. I will likely never reread any of those books, yet they're one of the most foundational aspects of my writing life. In that sense, even though I've outgrown my Spider-Man obsession--not devotion, of course--I like to be by my books.