Spider-man books

[Christopher]

Greg Cox wrote:

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And it's not like the novels are all that tied into whatever the current continuity of the comics is.

Well, it depends. My X-Men novel was set in an approximation of the continuity as it stood c. 2000, but with a couple of deliberate inconsistencies (such as Cyclops still being alive at a point when he was temporarily dead in the comics) and some elements more reflective of the later Grant Morrison run and the movies (Xavier's school having a large number of students). My priority was to get to use the characters I wanted, and I only picked that period because it was the best time for having (approximately) that particular team composition. So it wasn't solidly tied to any part of the comics continuity. However, all three Pocket Spidey novels that I'm aware of -- mine, Keith's, and Jim Butcher's -- were all pretty closely integrated into the then-current J. Michael Straczynski continuity on Amazing Spider-Man, and all at pretty much the same point within that continuity, just after Mary Jane began her theater career and just before Spidey joined the Avengers. (And I incorporated elements from what Paul Jenkins was doing over in The Spectacular Spider-Man at the same time.) Indeed, Jim's book was a direct sequel to JMS's first storyline in Amazing. And mine was loosely a sequel to a 2001 Paul Jenkins story in Peter Parker: Spider-Man.

Although I should add I deliberately chose to keep my book at a point in the continuity a year or two before what was coming out while I was writing, before Spidey's Avengers membership and all the rapid continuity changes that followed (like the brief flirtation with organic webbing, the Civil War stuff, etc. So I was trying to balance keeping it "timeless" and keeping it integrated with the continuity. I suspect Keith and Jim were striving for a similar balance, since we all independently chose the same narrow window for our books.

[Greg Cox]

Whereas I was keeping one eye quite deliberately on the movie audience. Although my book was technically set in the continuity of the comics, not the films, I very much wanted the book to be accessible to readers who might have only seen the FF movies or cartoons . . . .

[Christopher]

Yeah, that was the brief I got, and that I assume we all got. Marco told me to approach it like a movie, to tell a standalone story that wasn't dependent on continuity and could play fast and loose with it. Still, I tried to do that while still being as consistent with the comics continuity as I could, and evidently I wasn't the only one. Kinda the same way we'd approach a standalone Trek novel: not dependent on continuity that may be unfamiliar to the audience, but not contradicting anything in the canon. (Although in this case, we were allowed to contradict specific bits of continuity so long as we were true to the fundamentals of the characters.)

[JD]

Have any of you guys read Allies & Enemies (the Batman/Superman novel) or The Last Days of Krypton? I have both in my Nook wishlist, and I really enjoyed the samples I read, but I was just curious what someone who'd read both thought.

[Snaploud]

JD wrote:

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Have any of you guys read Allies & Enemies (the Batman/Superman novel) or The Last Days of Krypton? I have both in my Nook wishlist, and I really enjoyed the samples I read, but I was just curious what someone who'd read both thought.

I enjoyed them both. Batman: No Man's Land and Batman: Knightfall are also good.

[Admiral_Young]

Enemies and Allies is excellent. My favorite thing from Kevin J. Anderson and since I don't like his work much that's saying a lot. The Last Days of Krypton is bad, but some have liked it here.

[Chris McCarver]

Really need to track some of these down sometime... got a bit harder when my local Borders shut down (grumble).

[JD]

Admiral_Young wrote:

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Enemies and Allies is excellent. My favorite thing from Kevin J. Anderson and since I don't like his work much that's saying a lot. The Last Days of Krypton is bad, but some have liked it here.

What characters other than Batman, Superman, and Lex Luthor are in it?

[Christopher]

JD wrote:

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What characters other than Batman, Superman, and Lex Luthor are in it?

I came across Enemies and Allies at the library and remembered the recommendation here, so I picked it up. It's got Clark/Superman, Lois, Perry, Jimmy, and Lex on the Metropolis side and Bruce/Batman and Alfred on the Gotham side, with a brief appearance by Captain James Gordon and cameos by a couple of society figures named Kyle and Cobblepot. It's also got President Eisenhower, Joseph McCarthy, and Eleanor Roosevelt.

It's an okay book, an interesting alternate history of Superman and Batman, but there are some failures of research both in history and physics, things that most readers probably wouldn't be troubled by but which stood out for me. And it was a bit odd seeing a story set in 1957-8 but featuring more modern versions of Superman, Batman, and Luthor.

[Man of Steel]

Someone's got to pick up the license to publish more Marvel novels. Although, Marvel has their own line I think so why don't they just publish novels (not the graphic)

Is anyone still putting out DC novels? Didn't Pocket have it for a bit?

[Greg Cox]

Man of Steel wrote:

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Someone's got to pick up the license to publish more Marvel novels. Although, Marvel has their own line I think so why don't they just publish novels (not the graphic)

Is anyone still putting out DC novels? Didn't Pocket have it for a bit?

Just in case anyone missed it, my novelization of COUNTDOWN is being reissued as a mass-market paperback in June.

So far, Ace has published all of my DC novelizations, but I'm not aware of anything new in the pipeline . . . .

[Therin of Andor]

Man of Steel wrote:

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Although, Marvel has their own line I think so why don't they just publish novels (not the graphic)

Because publishing text novels, and making them profitable, is a rather different set-up to graphic novels?

Didn't Pocket have it for a bit?

All listed here
http://therinofandor.blogspot.com/20...superhero.html

a link from Page 1 of this thread.

[Whofan]

Peter David-who of course has written many Trek novels-wrote an excellent Hulk novel "What Savage Beast". Basically, it takes place around Hulk #430 or so in David's own run, when the Merged Hulk and Betty are hiding out, and when the Hulk gets angry he transforms into Banner but with the Savage Hulk's persona. It has an interesting couple of twists as well. It's not really 'canon' though as the events in the novel are never addressed in the comic itself (Also the Ghosts of the Future arc kind of ovverides it).

[Admiral_Young]

Christopher, Anderson acknowledges that he embellished history for the purposes of telling his story in the back of the book. The "research failures" in history at least were done on purpose. I can't profess to say that the physics is though

[Christopher]

Admiral_Young wrote:

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Christopher, Anderson acknowledges that he embellished history for the purposes of telling his story in the back of the book. The "research failures" in history at least were done on purpose. I can't profess to say that the physics is though

Those aren't what I'm referring to. I'm referring to subtler things, like assuming that Fidel Castro's revolution was driven by a passionate devotion to Communism. That's erroneous. Castro started out as a nationalist revolutionary, fighting to liberate the Cuban people from the dictator Batista. At the time of Enemies and Allies, in 1957, Castro was seen as a pro-democratic freedom fighter, and actually spoke out against Communism and dictatorships. It wasn't until he actually took over in 1959 that Castro began showing dictatorial leanings himself and earned America's enmity, and it wasn't until 1961 that he declared himself a Communist, mainly because it was politically expedient to side with America's rivals in order to get their backing against America. So that was a massive anachronism.

In that and other things, Anderson simply went with generally accepted myths about history rather than actually doing the research. Another example is the assumption that the "Roswell crash" was famous as far back as 1957. Actually it was a minor event that was largely forgotten until a UFO researcher dug it up in the late '70s. The Roswell mythology is mostly a creation of the '80s and '90s.

And then there's the bit where a damaged nuclear reactor explodes rather than simply melting down. That's where the physics failed. It's a complete impossibility, and it's an irresponsible misconception to propagate.