Spider-Man: The Lizard Sanction Mass Market Paperback – August 1, 1996

Great book enjoy

The Lizard Sanction is an odd production. It's the middle book of a trilogy by Diane Duane which Simon and Schuster decided to turn into an abridged Dramatic audiobook, and might as well be a radio drama.Having not read the underlying book, I can't comment authoritatively on the plot, but the book's plot doesn't sound bad. You've got Spider-man, Venom, and the Lizard in one story along with a gang of dangerous terrorists and a bold space exploration plan, there's bits of drama around Kirk Connors, and a hint at something around Peter and Mary Jane. The sound design is also decent with some pretty solid effects.What kills the story are two things. First, this was recorded for CD and in order to get onto one CD, they have compress everything down to 80 minutes and this was a 300 page book. The production is full of exposition and it felt like it needed room to breathe. Even if that problem had been address, the production had another problem. There was so many listless performances. Spider-man didn't sound like Spider-man, the boy who played Kurt Connors' son was completely wooden, and the growling of the Lizard was laughable.While it had been a long time since the Golden Age of Radio, Simon and Schuster could (and should) have done better with just a little more effort. At Random House, they did audio dramatizations of Louie L'Amour stories and those are brilliant. While Sci-fi can have some different challenges than Westerns, there's no way there should be this much disparity between products between two very large publishers.This is a curiosity and the main thing it does do is make me curious about the rest of the series and reading the book. The dramatized version, despite some good moments, was very inepty handled.

Diane Duane does an excellent job of capturing the characters of Spiderman and Mary Jane in this book. I like how she combined Peter's adventures as Spiderman with events from his real life with Mary Jane. This is what has always made Spiderman one of the most enduring characters in comics. He seems like a real person with real problems and not just some guy who fights bad guys all the time. I didn't really like how the Lizard was handled in this book, but the interaction with his wife and kid did add to the story. This book should appeal to any new Spiderman fans brought in by the movie, or to longtime comic readers like myself.

I have never read a novelization of Spider Man prior to this, so I was not sure what to expect. What I found is that Diane Donald proved to be a very competent writer. She handled the novel professionally, and as a fellow writer, I can certainly appreciate that. The story itself was interesting, but I found the scope to be a little small in nature. Perhaps that was just an exposure to some of the movies, which have a much larger scope. Of the characters, I found Venom to be the most interesting. The Lizard sanction gave a different side of him, which I enjoyed reading. The Lizard, on the other hand, I found to be less developed, even though he was the title character in the novel.In the Lizard sanction, Spider Man is on assignment. While on assignment, he is tracking the Lizard, who has fallen in with some baddies, in the form of the stereotypical evil corporation. Dr. Curt Connors is working for these goons, while trying to figure out how to revert back to his normal form on a permanent basis. This leads to rivals, Spidey and Venom to work together to control the Lizard and beat down the shadowy, evil corporation. You can probably tell by the tone of this review that I find the corporation as the evil entity responsible for the world's woes to be overdone and ineffective. A little creativity on the part of these writers would be nice. Despite that, the action was good and the plot reasonable. In all, the novel was solid and entertaining but unspectacular.Carl Alves - author of Blood Street

A fun Spidey romp by Ms Duane. Spidey fights the Lizard, natch, swamps involved, that sort of thing. Very competent.After going to his friend Curt Connors for help, Spidey realises that Curt is having a few problems of his own. He tries to get the good Doctor's family somewhere safe, and then go and try and find the Lizard.

Yep, ANOTHER Diane Duane Spider-Man book. Yep, another pretty boring and usless story that barely ties into the last book (Venom Factor) and I can barely see how it ties into the last book (Octupus Agenda) which I have yet to read, honestly. Yep, Spider-Man fights Venom, the Lizard, and faceless mercs in boring, boring, BORING scenes. Yep, Diane calls him "Spidey" almost throughout the entire novel (as if typing Spider-MAN is too much effort). Yep, Mary-Jane is in it and is even MORE annoying. Yep, more annoyingly juvenile sex-talk and sex-do between Peter and MJ. Yep, there is a stupid sub-plot of MJ getting work in Florida only to find shady dealings while doing so. Yep, you're supposed to take this seriously. Yep, I can't beleive I took this long to write this review.

She did it again! Diane blew me away in this book! I think if you read the first one in this series(The Venom Factor) this is a defenite don't miss. I especially liked the blend of humor and ruthlessness Duane used when writing about Venom. That was cool!!