Coming on Nov 26 and Dec 3 respectively, these two classic Spidey novels will be available from Audible.
In the last year Dreamscape productions has been adapting several old Spider-Man novels into audiobooks.
To date, their Spider-Man audiobooks have included:
- ‘Spider-Man: The Darkest Hours’, a 2006 novel set during (and embracing elements of) J. Michael Straczynski’s run on ASM. If you liked the (pre-Avengers) JMS run I’d personally recommend this story for you.
- ‘The Ultimate Spider-Man’, a 1994 anthology book, perhaps most well known for the excellent short story ‘Five Minutes’. The anthology is worth checking out for that story alone frankly.
- ‘Spider-Man: Carnage in New York’, a 1995 novel based upon a 25-26 page prose outline provided by long time ASM writer and co-creator of Carnage, David Michelinie. It’s a fun and simple Carnage story.
- ‘Spider-Man: Gathering of the Sinister Six’, a 1999 novel which formed the first part of a trilogy that famously introduced Spider-Man’s younger sister, doing so well over a decade before Teresa Parker debuted. I confess to have not checked this novel out yet but I’ve only ever heard praise for it and the trilogy as a whole.
Between the above and their two upcoming releases it seems Dreamscape intended to adapt the entire back catalogue of Spidey novels.
‘Untold Tales of Spider-Man’ was released in 1997 and like ‘The Ultimate Spider-Man’ is an anthology, but every single story takes place in Spider-Man’s past rather than the then current status quo. It was inspired by the then recent ‘Untold Tales of Spider-Man’ comic book series, and Kurt Busiek (writer of the comic book) was even an editor for the anthology.
Perhaps more tantalizingly though is the release of ‘The Amazing Spider-Man: Mayhem in Manhattan’. The release of this novel should be of interest to Spider-Man fans far and wide for several reasons.
To begin with, to my knowledge it was the first ever Spider-Man novel, being released way back in 1978. As far as I can tell it’s also been out of print since then meaning that the upcoming audiobook will be the first time in around 40 years the story will be wildly available. For many Spider-Man fans it’s likely the first time they’ve had to experience the story at all. It’s also noticeable for having been written by Len Wein (the then current writer of ASM) and Marv Wolfman (the then soon-to-be writer of ASM).
However the single most significant thing about the novel and what makes it’s release so recommended to Spider-Man fans is the fact that this novel holds the unique distinction of being 100% to the mainstream/616 version of Spider-Man!
Back in 1978’s Amazing Spider-Man #186, writer Marv Wolfman decided to make the novel unquestionably canon by both referencing events from it and for good measure including an editorial caption pointing readers to the novel.
Due to this and the novel being out of print for so long the upcoming audio release is something of a ‘lost story’, in Spider-Man’s canon. One I am personally very excited to check out. There is even a new thread on the messageboard started to discuss when and where the novel would best fit into Spider-Man’s pre-existing canon.
How about you?
Are you among the people who’ve never read/listened to this story before and intrigued by it?
Or maybe there are other Spider-Man novels you’d like to see adapted into audiobooks?
Share your thoughts below in the comments.
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@franz29
I was going to talk about this in the post but cut it. There are OTHER Spider-Man audiobooks out there. LOADS actually but the most accessible (as they were made more recently) are the stuff listed above as well as stuff from GraphicAudio.
GA had a licence to do Marvel and DC audiobooks for most of the 2010s but both companies went elsewhere not too long ago. GA’s advantage over Dreamscape and other audio books is that they are fully cast with music and sound effects too. They DO cut stuff from the novels but that’s due to their remit to create a more immersive audiobook experience, a ‘movie in your mind’, as they call it. On occasion they also took comic storylines and adapted them directly themselves. For instance there is no novelization for AvX but GA turned the comic into an audiobook all the same
Although a lot of their productions aren’t on their website anymore, Audible/Dreamscape have some of their productions available. The Spidey relevant stuff is:
‘Spider-Man: Drowned In Thunder’: It’s set during the JMS run and a is a sort of sequel to Darkest Hours. It’s to this day the best Spider-Man novel I’ve ever experienced. Highly recommended
‘Spider-Man: Kraven’s Last Hunt’: An audiobook of the 2015 novelization. I wouldn’t recommend this except to people who’re dead set on never ever reading the comic book story for whatever reason. It’s not a good adaptation, but that’s not on GA’s fault.
‘Spider-Man: Forever Young’: It’s half a novelization of the Stone Tablet Saga from the Stan Lee run, but half an original story too.
‘Venom: Lethal protector’: A novelization of the comic book that is in my view actually better than the comic. Depending on how you like your Venom, this could be enjoyable for a lot of people.
Cool, I didn’t realise they’d released load of new audiobooks. I have The Darkest hours in novel form but admit I haven’t ever read it. Still have the Ultimate Spider-Man anthology from ’94 on the shelf and re-read it fairly often – but I might pick this up on audio so I can listen to a short story in the car. Gathering was and OK read, but the subsequent two were far superior and a more coherent story line. They last two can be read as a duology without missing anything from the first.
I’ll pick up the two new ones on Audible since I haven’t read them and it will be interesting to see where they take us.