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Spider-man books

tomswift2002 said:
Never heard of it. And I don’t read the comics. Was he trying to link Spider-Man into the Babylon 5 universe?
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Whaaaaaa? No, of course not. Just because he created Babylon 5 doesn't mean that's the only thing he's capable of writing (and since it was a Warner Bros. franchise, it would be more likely to cross over with DC than Marvel). Straczynski was the regular writer on The Amazing Spider-Man from 2001-07. Morlun was the villain in his debut storyline on the series and a recurring adversary in subsequent years.

And why does it matter whether you read the comics? Most of the characters in any Spider-Man novel are going to be from the comics -- that's a given to start with. Spidey, Mary Jane, the Black Cat, the Rhino, they all came from the comics the same as Morlun, just earlier.
 
Speaking of superheroes, this seems like a good place to announce a new book coming out in March 2021 that features a lot of us past and present Trek novelists.

BIFF! BAM! EE-YOW!: The Subterranean Blue Grotto Guide to Batman '66 -- Season Two is indeed an episode guide to the second season of the old BATMAN tv series, with essays by me, Keith, Peter David, Bob Greenburger, and many others. (I contributed a "review" of the Penguin's short-lived career as a movie director.)
 
tomswift2002 said:
Also it’s interesting in that it is told in the first person, so this is an autobiography by Peter Parker and Spider-Man about an adventure that features the Black Cat, the Rhino and the brothers and sister of Morlun.
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It's just a first person story, I don't think it would really count as an autobiography since it just covers one event, not Peter Parker's whole life.
This is actually in line with the comics, since a lot of them do tend to feature first person narration from the title character.
 
I just started the Generation X book, Crossroads by J. Steven York. I read the first Generation X novel by Scott Lobdell and Elliot S. Maggin 9 years ago and I was planning to read Crossroads & Genogoth shortly after, even though the first book was horrible and very, very boring. Well, that novel really turned me off on the Generation X series. And I still remember how horrible that book was.

Now then Crossroads was released in November 1998, so there are some 90’s tropes in it, such as when Frost and Banshee tell the students to pick out two RV’s (one for the girls, one for the guys) and the guys pick one that has horns and sounds like it came off a Texas farm (with a water bed), while the girls pick a more regular RV. However while the guys are boasting about there’s, they mention there’s no satellite for TV, and Jubilee just pipes up saying that classic 90’s phrase, “We get 500 channels!” That’s so 90’s—-I can’t think of too many people boasting nowadays in 2024 about having 500 TV channels.
 
Generation X was a chore to edit -- Elliot wrote some definitive superhero novels with his Superman tomes, but he had no ear for GenX, and I had to do a lot of work on his prose, which is why we didn't hire Scott and Elliot to write the next GenX book. Steve did an amazing job, and Crossroads remains one of my favorites in the line (and Genogoths was good, too, though I had left the company by the time his manuscript was turned in).
 
Gotta admit, I don't see the problem with a story set in the 1990s feeling like it's set in the 1990s. Even with Marvel's ever-shifting timescale, their stories are usually explicitly set in the present time of their release.
 
Christopher said:
Gotta admit, I don't see the problem with a story set in the 1990s feeling like it's set in the 1990s. Even with Marvel's ever-shifting timescale, their stories are usually explicitly set in the present time of their release.
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Most of the books in the line didn’t have those dated things. I mean even now when I think back to Diane Duane’s Spider-Man trilogy, the amount of time she spends talking about film still camera’s and the attachments and chemicals needed for development, ten years ago that felt really dated, and to a point it still is. However it’s not as dated now as demand for film has grown over the last 10 years.
(https://kosmofoto.com/2022/10/eastman-kodak-seeks-more-film-technicians-as-demand-continues-to-boom/)

However with Jubilee’s line, as the years go by more and more people are ditching satellite and cable TV for free-antenna TV and streaming services. Somehow I don’t see the return of the 500-channel universe on satellite.

However other books in the line would just say that Peter had a camera, leaving it up to people in the 90s assuming that it was a film camera. However reading the book in the 2010s or 2020s it could be assumed to be either a digital camera or film camera.

Interesting bit of continuity in Crossroads, but Peter Parker’s “Webs” book makes an appearance on page 41 at the MONSTER dorm on the West Coast.
 
tomswift2002 said:
Most of the books in the line didn’t have those dated things. I mean even now when I think back to Diane Duane’s Spider-Man trilogy, the amount of time she spends talking about film still camera’s and the attachments and chemicals needed for development, ten years ago that felt really dated, and to a point it still is. However it’s not as dated now as demand for film has grown over the last 10 years.
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I say again, what is wrong with a story being "dated" to the period it's explicitly set in? If a story set in the 39th century features vacuum-tube electronics and punch-tape computer readouts, that's dated. If a story set in 1956 features those things, it's not dated, it's just a period piece. Yes, Marvel comics pretend that decades-old stories happened more recently as per their sliding timescale, but these books were their own distinct continuity that took place in the 1990s.
 
I'm not sure Diane's books are a great example, given that the third book in her Spider-Man trilogy had a climax that took place at the twin towers in the World Trade Center.....................
 
I don't really get the objection here. It's like complaining that Carl Kolchak is still using a typewriter instead of a computer -- in a NIGHT STALKER episode filmed and set in the 1970s.

Books, movies, comics, etc that are set in the present-day inevitably become period pieces with the passing of time, even if that was not the original intent. Heck, I was just watching an old movie from 1931 last night. At the time it was released, it was set in the present-day, but invariably the clothes and cars and slang and topical references are now somewhat vintage. (Bootleggers! Speakeasies! Prohibition!)

But is that a problem or a flaw? If I was to review this movie, I can't imagine objecting that a 1930s movie looks and feels like it's set in . . . the 1930s?

Same with an X-Men novel written and set in the 1990s.
 
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To be fair, I'm not seeing anywhere in @tomswift2002 's posts where they are saying "this is a problem" or "I don't like this". To me it just reads as an observation, rather than any type of complaint. :shrug:
 
Avro Arrow said:
To be fair, I'm not seeing anywhere in @tomswift2002 's posts where they are saying "this is a problem" or "I don't like this". To me it just reads as an observation, rather than any type of complaint. :shrug:
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It's not about complaining, it's just about whether "dated" is the right word to use there. "Dated" means outdated or anachronistic, incongruous to the period in which the story purports to be set. If something specific to 1990s culture appears in a book that's meant to take place in, say, the year 2357, then that's dated. But if something specific to 1990s culture appears in a book that's explicitly set in the 1990s, then by definition it isn't dated, it's just a period piece.
 
It's funny. One of things that I like about older books and movies and TV shows is the time-capsule effect. Besides the plot in the foreground, it can also be fun and fascinating to look back in time and see what the "present" looked like back in the day.

To my mind, it's a feature, not a bug. :)
 
Greg Cox said:
It's funny. One of things that I like about older books and movies and TV shows is the time-capsule effect. Besides the plot in the foreground, it can also be fun and fascinating to look back in time and see what the "present" looked like back in the day.

To my mind, it's a feature, not a bug. :)
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I guess it's different if you lived through the era in question than if you didn't. Watching older shows often gives me a nostalgia buzz for an era from my past, but for someone who wasn't even born then, it might make it more inaccessible.

On the other hand, I can have nostalgic appreciation for things from before I was born, like 1930s serials and 1940s movies. But then, when you and I grew up, those things from earlier decades were routinely rerun on TV, so we could develop an affinity for them. Today's media landscape makes it much harder for people to be exposed to older works, so that connection to the past is weaker.
 
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