Spider-Man Venom Fact

That a full-color Spider-Man trading card will be bound into the first edition of this mediocre kick-off volume to the Marvel Comics Novels series clarifies just who is considered the target readership for the new line of books based on popular Marvel superheroes. Unfortunately, teens may be put off by Duane's (Spock's World) soap-operatic take on the characters, while nostalgia-crazed baby boomers are likely to find the pacing slow, at least until late in the story. The plot concerns how Spider-Man matches wits with archenemies Venom and Hobgoblin and uses an unnamed alien creature (who has a fondness for eating radioactive material) to try to keep Hobgoblin from destroying New York. The assorted characters' complex histories, drawn from decades' worth of Spider-Man comics, are recapped in chunks of prose that are as stale as Duane's handling of the acting career of Spider-Man's wife, Mary Jane Parker (whose forays into auditions don't reflect the reality of the New York acting scene), or, for that matter, of the requisite juvenile humor (Mary Jane wrinkling her nose at Spider-Man's sweat-soaked suit and suggesting that he create a ``summerweight'' one). Even so, with his comic books selling at the rate of 200 million a year Spidey clearly has enough fans to make this flawed but still mildly diverting first book in a promised Spider-Man trilogy a big success. Illustrations. (Oct.)