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Literature / Spider-Man: The Venom Trilogy
aka: Spider Man The Venom Factor

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The Venom Trilogy is a series of Marvel books written by Diane Duane. Co-starring Spider-Man and Venom, the trilogy revolves around repeatedly encountering an organization named the CCRC.

When a homeless man is brutally murdered in a warehouse, all the evidence points to Venom as the perpetrator. Add the mysterious disappearance of nuclear materials and the Hobgoblin (Jason Macendale) swooping around, and Spider-Man has his hands more-than full. But is Venom really behind the brutal murders? And if not, who (or what) is?


The Venom Trilogy contains the following tropes:

    open/close all folders 

    In General 
  • Continuity Nod: The events of ''The Venom Factor"' are referenced in the other two novels in the trilogy.

    The Venom Factor 
  • Anti-Hero: Venom's in full "Lethal Protector" mode here, taking pride in protecting the homeless and victimized from those who would prey on them. As such, the fact that there's an apparent copycat running around killing homeless in his name does not sit well with him.
  • Asshole Victim: The three muggers who would have attacked the homeless people that Eddie was talking to...that is, if Eddie hadn't been host to Venom.
  • Big "NO!": When the alien eats his bomb the Hobgoblin screams out one of these and attacks it. It casually backhands him out of the way. Twice.
  • Bizarre Alien Biology: The alien that everyone mistakes for Venom devours radioactive materials, can use radiation to melt barriers, and explodes into a bunch of mini-aliens if it over-eats.
  • Bond Villain Stupidity: Hobgoblin has a perfect chance to take out Spider-Man in the beginning, but chooses to let him live to see his triumph. Three guesses how that choice works out for him.
  • Brought Down to Badass: A downplayed example - Spider-Man is poisoned with a compound that nullifies his Spider-Sense, but leaves the rest of his powers functional. Not being able to predict danger is still very dangerous for Spidey, especially since he's not used to operating without it. Thankfully, it's only temporary, and his Spider-Sense comes back in time for the ending of the second act.
  • Combat Tentacles: Both Venom and the radiation-eating alien can form tendrils to subdue prey, but the alien's are stronger.
  • Costume Copycat: Aside from lacking the iconic white spider emblem, the alien is almost identical to Venom.
  • Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: Upon revealing that he isn't the one stealing nuclear material and killing homeless people, Venom declares his intention to find the real culprit and devour their spleen. Spider-Man doesn't waste the chance to point out the ludicrous nature of this threat.
    Spider-Man: Look, hearts or brains, I could understand. But a spleen? I'll bet you don't know what a spleen even is. Do you even know what a spleen looks like?
  • Do Not Adjust Your Set: Hobgoblin delivers a recording of his extortion threat to the news, which they play for the whole city to see.
  • Enemy Mine: Spider-Man attacks Venom thinking he's snapped, but they renew their truce to find the real killer and stop Hobgoblin's plot.
  • Evil Counterpart: Venom assumes the radiation-eating alien is a new supervillain trying to rip him off.
  • Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humour: Both Venom and the Hobgoblin enjoy cracking sadistic jokes at Spider-Man's expense.
  • Explosive Breeder: The alien literally does this after reaching critical mass, exploding into dozens of ravenous babies that promptly Zerg Rush Spider-Man.
  • Feed It a Bomb: Realizing the alien eats radioactive material, Spider-Man lures it to the Hobgoblin's lair and it promptly eats the nuke.
  • Gone Horribly Right: Zig-zagged in the third act. Spider-Man gets the bright idea to lead the alien to Hobgoblin's hideout, counting on its knack for sensing radiation to locate the nuclear bomb. It does so...and then proceeds to tear the nuke apart to get at its plutonium core. Thankfully, the process doesn't set the bomb off, and the plutonium is devoured before it can spill deadly radiation into the area.
  • Hand Blast: The alien can fire radiation from its hands that rapidly melts whatever it's directed at.
  • Humanoid Aliens: Invoked when Spider-Man is pursuing the radiation-eating alien and muses on the probabilities of it having evolved into a humanoid form.
  • Humiliation Conga: Hobgoblin gets his comeuppance in very satisfying fashion. First Spider-Man and Venom wreck his hideout, then the alien devours his nuclear bomb's plutonium core just as he's about to set it off, then Spider-Man punches him out while he's freaking out over this, then he gets hauled off by the police. And to top it all off, one of the police officers notes that his extortion scheme was never going to work because he was demanding more money than people could put together in such a short amount of time.
  • Identical Stranger: Aside from not having spider insignia, the alien looks almost-identical to Venom. This leads to Venom getting accused of committing its crimes, which seriously ticks him off.
  • Insane Troll Logic: Discussed with J. Jonah Jameson's beef with Spider-Man, Peter Parker musing that Jameson tends to blame Spider-Man for everything from global warming to World War II if he's allowed to rant for long enough.
  • I Shall Taunt You: How Spider-Man wears down Hobgoblin's nerves in the third act, taunting him relentlessly while remaining out of sight. This quickly makes Hobby a lot more careless than usual.
  • Oh, Crap!: When Spider-Man leads the alien into Hobgoblin's hideout with the intent of exploiting its nose for radiation to help him find the bomb, Hobgoblin has this reaction when he sees it tearing his bomb apart.
  • Just Eat Him: How Venom intended to deal with the alien and Hobgoblin.
  • Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: While waiting for an audition, MJ spots a TV playing a program about an eternally happy, dancing, singing purple dinosaur who wants to be friends with everyone and imagines introducing it to Venom.
  • Make Them Rot: The alien can focus radiation into its palms to rapidly decay material. It's never seen using this on living targets, though.
  • More Teeth than the Osmond Family: Both Venom and the alien have gaping maws full of fangs.
  • Nerves of Steel: A trio of homeless people don't even flinch when Eddie turns into Venom right in front of them.
  • Non-Malicious Monster: Downplayed, but the alien that everyone mistakes for Venom isn't openly evil - just hungry. The reason it's tearing apart waste containers and making off with nuclear waste is because it eats radiation. As for the poor homeless guy it devoured in the beginning, he was sprayed with radioactive waste, and attacked the creature in a crazed stupor; the result was basically the same as jumping into a shark tank with bloody steaks tied to your body.
  • Not Me This Time: When a homeless man is brutally murdered and the perpetrator is described as a hulking black creature with Blank White Eyes and More Teeth than the Osmond Family, everyone assumes Venom's finally snapped. It's actually an alien with a taste for radioactive material.
  • And Now for Someone Completely Different: The novel alternates point-of-views between Spider-Man, Venom, and Mary-Jane. There's also a few guest perspectives from the crew of the nuclear sub and a couple of homeless bystanders.
  • Nuke 'em: Hobgoblin builds a dirty nuclear bomb and threatens to blow up New York unless he gets an absurd amount of money.
  • Taking You with Me: When his plans are foiled, Hobgoblin tries to set off his nuke in a fit of rage - though the radiation-eating alien puts a stop to it. Additionally, given that his base was built above where the bomb was stashed, there's no indication of how he planned to survive setting it off.
  • To Serve Man:
    • At the beginning of the novel the alien eats a homeless man who had been doused in radioactive waste.
    • While not outright stating he did so, the novel implies Venom ate a group of muggers who threatened a group of homeless people.
  • Useless Spleen: Venom states that when he finds whoever is responsible for the murders (that Venom is being wrongly accused of) he will eat his spleen. Spider-Man comments that this is an odd choice of organ to target and that Venom likely doesn't even know where someone's spleen is.
  • Villainous Breakdown: Hobgoblin does not take the destruction of his precious nuclear bomb very well.
  • Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Venom wants to rip Hobgoblin apart and be done with it. Spider-Man, however, has an objection beyond Thou Shall Not Kill - until they find Hobgoblin's bomb and figure out how to disarm it, they might not have a way to do either if Hobgoblin rigged a deadman's switch into it.
  • The Worf Effect: During their fight, the alien hands Venom his symbiote-covered ass.
  • You Can't Thwart Stage One: Hobgoblin's one step ahead of Spider-Man for most of the first act, stealing nuclear material from a warehouse and submarine easily. Subverted in the second act, where Spider-Man did catch him when he was stealing more nuclear material from the university, but Venom's arrival gave Hobgoblin the chance to escape.

    The Lizard Sanction 
  • Bang, Bang, BANG: Lampshaded, as Spidey comments that real gunfire sounds nothing like it does in the movies, and fills in his own descriptions of the actual sounds, such as "rulers being smacked on a desk."

    The Octopus Agenda 
  • Crippling Overspecialization: Doctor Octopus unwittingly ruins his own plan when he tries to imprison both Spider-Man and Venom in a cell that he had prepared for Spider-Man, with the intention of forcing his enemy to watch as Octavius's plan to decimate global civilisation unfolded. As the cell had been designed exclusively to contain Spider-Man, the wall-crawler realised that there may be a loophole in the cell's design that Venom could exploit, which allowed them to stage a fight so that Venom could find a weakness in the cell's force field and break out.
  • Greater-Scope Villain: The book reveals Doctor Octopus as the mastermind behind the CCRC.
  • Mugging the Monster: Three punks try to assault Venom. With switchblades. Yeah, that doesn't go so well for them.

Alternative Title(s): Spider Man The Lizard Sanction, Spider Man The Octopus Agenda, Spider Man The Venom Factor

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