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Spider-Man: The CCRC Trilogy #3
Spider-Man: The Octopus Agenda
An investigation into a simple cellular phone fraud leads both Peter Parker and his alter-ego, the amazing Spider-Man, to a fiendish plot: with unique counterfeiting equipment and a devastatingly large stockpile of nuclear bombs, someone plans to destabilize the world's economy and destroy several major cities. The mysterious CCRC corporation is involved in this plan - and it has caused trouble in the past for Spider-Man and for the alien symbiote Venom, who has sworn to kill Spidey. Both hero and villain soon learn that the mastermind behind that old trouble and the new danger is none other than Spider-Man's most tenacious, most deadly enemy: Doctor Octopus. Now Spider-Man and Venom must put aside their differences and join forces to stop the greater menace of Doctor Octopus, before the villain devastates the planet!
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
7 people are currently reading
295 people want to read
About the author
Diane Duane
167 books2,416 followersDiane Duane has been a writer of science fiction, fantasy, TV and film for more than forty years.
Besides the 1980's creation of the Young Wizards fantasy series for which she's best known, the "Middle Kingdoms" epic fantasy series, and numerous stand-alone fantasy or science fiction novels, her career has included extensive work in the Star Trek TM universe, and many scripts for live-action and animated TV series on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as work in comics and computer games. She has spent a fair amount of time on the New York Times Bestseller List, and has picked up various awards and award nominations here and there.
She lives in County Wicklow, in Ireland, with her husband of more than thirty years, the screenwriter and novelist Peter Morwood.
Her favorite color is blue, her favorite food is a weird kind of Swiss scrambled-potato dish called maluns, she was born in a Year of the Dragon, and her sign is "Runway 24 Left, Hold For Clearance."
(From her official website)
Besides the 1980's creation of the Young Wizards fantasy series for which she's best known, the "Middle Kingdoms" epic fantasy series, and numerous stand-alone fantasy or science fiction novels, her career has included extensive work in the Star Trek TM universe, and many scripts for live-action and animated TV series on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as work in comics and computer games. She has spent a fair amount of time on the New York Times Bestseller List, and has picked up various awards and award nominations here and there.
She lives in County Wicklow, in Ireland, with her husband of more than thirty years, the screenwriter and novelist Peter Morwood.
Her favorite color is blue, her favorite food is a weird kind of Swiss scrambled-potato dish called maluns, she was born in a Year of the Dragon, and her sign is "Runway 24 Left, Hold For Clearance."
(From her official website)
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
April 14, 2023
This is a book based on the Marvel character. In this one Doc Ock has a plan to rule the world using a nuclear threat. Once again Spider-Man comes to the rescue.
My summary was short for a specific reason. With the title of the book and the opening scene that is how this book was set up to be about. I would argue it is not. We get another plot about Mary Jane's cell phone being cloned and the happy couple receives a huge phone bill. The problem is that we spend a majority of this book on that plot while Doc Ock takes a back seat. Obviously there needs to be a balancing act between the superhero life and the personal life. That was never achieved in this book as it was all about the personal life. The portrayal of the characters were fine but I was somewhat bored while reading this. Finally, when we get back to the comic book nature and get to the final battle I was not invested in this book. And that final battle was not epic at all and so disappointing.
I read these types of books for escapism. It never happened in this book. There was very little action as we dwelled on the character's issues of everyday life. I can stick to my own life if I wanted that. lol. This book only resembled a comic book genre type of book was in name only with the title and having their characters during the story. The comic book atmosphere was never achieved.
My summary was short for a specific reason. With the title of the book and the opening scene that is how this book was set up to be about. I would argue it is not. We get another plot about Mary Jane's cell phone being cloned and the happy couple receives a huge phone bill. The problem is that we spend a majority of this book on that plot while Doc Ock takes a back seat. Obviously there needs to be a balancing act between the superhero life and the personal life. That was never achieved in this book as it was all about the personal life. The portrayal of the characters were fine but I was somewhat bored while reading this. Finally, when we get back to the comic book nature and get to the final battle I was not invested in this book. And that final battle was not epic at all and so disappointing.
I read these types of books for escapism. It never happened in this book. There was very little action as we dwelled on the character's issues of everyday life. I can stick to my own life if I wanted that. lol. This book only resembled a comic book genre type of book was in name only with the title and having their characters during the story. The comic book atmosphere was never achieved.
January 27, 2021
This is the final book of Duane's informal Spider-Man prose trilogy, and was preceded by The Venom Factor and The Lizard Sanction. It's a good wrap to the series and brings in several loose ends and incorporates them well. The titular Octopus doesn't play as big a role as one might expect, but it's a definitely fan-friendly visit with Peter and pals. Maybe just a little short on action, but well-written. Excelsior!
March 7, 2025
This book wraps up the trilogy, and unfortunately it was my least favorite of the series. There just wasn't as much action and the story wasn't as interesting. Doc Ock is the main villain, but there's really not much to his appearance. Overall this was a good trilogy, but the ending fizzled just a little.
February 15, 2013
Wow snooze fest this book was boring, More soap opera of peter parkers life than spider-man, Wow glad this was a quick read becuase the drama was boring and the one battle at the end was not worth it. Skip this book! I love marvel and marvel books, this one skip.
October 30, 2023
I don't know what is about this author that makes her think hyper focussing on minutia is the key to a good Spider-Man story. The Peter Parker aspect of the story starts out as...get this...trying to pay a phone bill. She writes page after page describing Peter talking to customer service and going through all the frustrations of trying to resolve a billing issue with a bloated telecom corporation. Just say he called and had a frustrating experience...everyone on earth will understand what that is like, don't drag us through it step by step...we're reading a book about a man with spider powers fighting an octopus man... we're trying to have a good time and escape from reality for a few minutes not read a word for word transcript of a phone companies customer service automated message.This conversation with the phone company goes on for 8 pages! And then after that the story focusses on MJ's modelling career, and before that there was an entire chapter explaining how the Russian mob launders money then after that we got to sit through MJ's voice acting sessions where voice acting is explained in depth. Get to the Spider-Man part and then stay there!
This kind of thing is typical in this book and in the previous two, something that should be glossed over is told in excruciating and boring detail and all the stuff you want to hear about is glossed over. You want to read about a fight with the Lizard...sorry best I can do is describe a space shuttle. Want to hear about Dr Octopus sorry the best I can do is explain money laundering for 10 pages. And it's such a shame because the book is otherwise well written, the characters are true and believable the dialogue is good and action is described reasonably well...you just have to sift through so much pointless nonsense.
And the villains, Hobgoblin,Lizard,Dr Octopus... get no development and are barely ever in the book. I'm halfway through the book and Dr. Octopus the villain whose name is in the title has been in one brief scene, a scene where the security guard he roughs up and we never see again in the rest of the book gets more background and development. The story got so much build up over three books and then was wrapped up quickly in a chapter at the end in a story that was mostly unrelated.
This kind of thing is typical in this book and in the previous two, something that should be glossed over is told in excruciating and boring detail and all the stuff you want to hear about is glossed over. You want to read about a fight with the Lizard...sorry best I can do is describe a space shuttle. Want to hear about Dr Octopus sorry the best I can do is explain money laundering for 10 pages. And it's such a shame because the book is otherwise well written, the characters are true and believable the dialogue is good and action is described reasonably well...you just have to sift through so much pointless nonsense.
And the villains, Hobgoblin,Lizard,Dr Octopus... get no development and are barely ever in the book. I'm halfway through the book and Dr. Octopus the villain whose name is in the title has been in one brief scene, a scene where the security guard he roughs up and we never see again in the rest of the book gets more background and development. The story got so much build up over three books and then was wrapped up quickly in a chapter at the end in a story that was mostly unrelated.
June 20, 2024
What a bore! I mean, really. Why Duane thought we’d care THAT much about MJ’s career, I’ll never understand.
First of all, Doc Ock. Classic Spidey villain. How could that go wrong? EASY! You never use him in the story until the very end when it’s time for him to get beat up. He makes a rather grand entrance in the beginning, shows up for a moment towards the middle to remind us he’s in this book, and fights Spider-Man and Venom in the finale which was way too short.
MJ’s job. I just really couldn’t bring myself to care. It really added nothing to the story aside from some soap opera-y chapters. Just painfully uninteresting. Her whole story was basically the same as it was in The Lizard Sanction: MJ hustles for work. Duane couldn’t even be bothered to give her something different to do in this book.
Venom has something interesting to do. For one chapter at least. He does some investigating, reminding us that Brock used to be a real reporter. But then he vanishes again.
There’s a mob subplot that sounds like it would be interesting, but again, it’s only around for one chapter and is hardly mentioned again.
So aside from MJ job hunting, what is this book about? A PHONE BILL!! I’m not kidding. Peter and MJ get back from Florida and they have an outrageous phone bill that needs to get sorted out. It sort of gets wrapped up in with the mob subplot, but only briefly at the end. Why did Duane think I wanted to read about Peter being on the phone with customer support for pages and pages?
All in all, Duane’s Venom trilogy was painfully dull. Too much focus on daily life and MJ’s career in particular. Not that I dislike MJ. But we really don’t need to go with her on every crappy photo shoot, or see how her modeling gigs go. There also wasn’t nearly enough with the featured villains. Don’t just bring them around periodically. Make them real characters.
Snooze-fest.
First of all, Doc Ock. Classic Spidey villain. How could that go wrong? EASY! You never use him in the story until the very end when it’s time for him to get beat up. He makes a rather grand entrance in the beginning, shows up for a moment towards the middle to remind us he’s in this book, and fights Spider-Man and Venom in the finale which was way too short.
MJ’s job. I just really couldn’t bring myself to care. It really added nothing to the story aside from some soap opera-y chapters. Just painfully uninteresting. Her whole story was basically the same as it was in The Lizard Sanction: MJ hustles for work. Duane couldn’t even be bothered to give her something different to do in this book.
Venom has something interesting to do. For one chapter at least. He does some investigating, reminding us that Brock used to be a real reporter. But then he vanishes again.
There’s a mob subplot that sounds like it would be interesting, but again, it’s only around for one chapter and is hardly mentioned again.
So aside from MJ job hunting, what is this book about? A PHONE BILL!! I’m not kidding. Peter and MJ get back from Florida and they have an outrageous phone bill that needs to get sorted out. It sort of gets wrapped up in with the mob subplot, but only briefly at the end. Why did Duane think I wanted to read about Peter being on the phone with customer support for pages and pages?
All in all, Duane’s Venom trilogy was painfully dull. Too much focus on daily life and MJ’s career in particular. Not that I dislike MJ. But we really don’t need to go with her on every crappy photo shoot, or see how her modeling gigs go. There also wasn’t nearly enough with the featured villains. Don’t just bring them around periodically. Make them real characters.
Snooze-fest.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 19, 2019
This is the final book of a trilogy of Spider-Man novels published in 1990s. I read the first two back when I was in high school and they were brand new. I have finally finished the series two decades on, and I wouldn't say it was worth the wait.
Similar to the X-Men novelization I read a few months ago, I found this story didn't translate to the book form in a satisfying way. I'll always have a soft spot for Spider-Man, and read hundreds of Spidey comics as a kid, but there is precious little enjoyment to be had here.
Most of the book is simply very boring. An unbelievably large section is dedicated to trying to pay an unexpected phone bill. We spend huge chunks of time with Mary Jane at her work. There is a brief action sequence at the end of the book, which is otherwise almost completely bereft of the types of fight sequences you would normally associate with superhero comics.
There are thousands of Spider-Man comics for the reader to choose from, and plenty of movies as well. Either of these visual mediums serves the character better than putting him in a novel, which takes a lot of the fun out of Spider-Man and makes it harder to ignore how silly the whole thing is.
Similar to the X-Men novelization I read a few months ago, I found this story didn't translate to the book form in a satisfying way. I'll always have a soft spot for Spider-Man, and read hundreds of Spidey comics as a kid, but there is precious little enjoyment to be had here.
Most of the book is simply very boring. An unbelievably large section is dedicated to trying to pay an unexpected phone bill. We spend huge chunks of time with Mary Jane at her work. There is a brief action sequence at the end of the book, which is otherwise almost completely bereft of the types of fight sequences you would normally associate with superhero comics.
There are thousands of Spider-Man comics for the reader to choose from, and plenty of movies as well. Either of these visual mediums serves the character better than putting him in a novel, which takes a lot of the fun out of Spider-Man and makes it harder to ignore how silly the whole thing is.
December 3, 2021
The final book in Diane Duane’s Spider-Man trilogy. Previous books were The Venom Factor and The Lizard Sanction. It’s okay but not as good as the first book. Spidey teams up with Venom to stop Doc Ock. I really don’t know if I read all the books knowing the books were a trilogy when they came out.
November 20, 2024
The weakest of the trilogy, but still a fun outing for the web-slinger. Speaking personally, I've waited years to read this one after sitting on the first two books while growing up, so it was nice to finally cap off the story. It's also always refreshing to go back to that time in Spidey History when Peter was married to MJ, and Venom was all the talk of the town.
July 25, 2020
This book is comically dated, but in a great way. It's written really well, but it's got a subplot based on 90s era cell tech. Gets a good hold on how tech is advancing so fast the laws can't keep up. Another of the much better Spiderman novels.
August 23, 2019
Solid writing, and *seriously* solid portrayal of MJ.
July 31, 2020
Another abrupt ending, no development for a very absent Otto Octavius which I find odd considering he's the mastermind of all the villainy in this series.
May 19, 2021
A strong finish to the trilogy, with Spider-Man forced to team up with Venom to stop Dr. Octopus while unable to truly trust him.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 16, 2022
not as good as the other ones in this series, it's wrapped up just a little bit too quickly for my tastes
May 21, 2022
Loved every minute of it. A big nuclear thriller with real moments and an author that lets them breathe.
October 3, 2022
Its....its a bit..., well its well written, but I feel like Mary Janes sub plot was more interesting.
January 30, 2023
Not too bad of a novel, but apparently it was the conclusion of a 3 part series that I didn't know. Ha.
March 6, 2023
Did not age well and once you start reading it is easy to see why.
September 12, 2024
insane book to finish reading on 9/11
February 4, 2025
The prologue was the best part of this book. After that, I lost interest pretty fast. It is very slow and boring, with a useless side story (which takes up a lot of the book).
May 15, 2012
I'm a big fan of superheroes, including Spidey, and I was looking forward to a big finish to Diane Duane's wall-crawler trilogy before reading The Octopus Agenda. Although the story was good and the writing great, there was too much sitting around/talking and not enough action. Even the final scene is a bit anti-climactic. I'm sure die-hard Marvel Comics fanatics will go nuts over this, but everyone else might be left out in the cold, unless you just have to satisfy your curiosity for what happened after The Lizard Sanction. I will say that it was nice to see prolific-yet-little-known voice actor Frank Welker get a positive mention, though; I've never met anyone else who even knows who Mr. Welker is, so to read his name in a book is all the more satisfying.
January 14, 2008
This book is for anyone that likes non fiction novels, or interested in spider-man. Its a a good action packed book for those who enjoys the comics.
i personally liked this book because i already know about the background of the characters, and i love to read these marvel superheros because i loved it since i was a little kid and i still do.
This book is about how spider-man must team-up with venom to fight doctor octopus from destroying New York city from a nuclear attack.
i personally liked this book because i already know about the background of the characters, and i love to read these marvel superheros because i loved it since i was a little kid and i still do.
This book is about how spider-man must team-up with venom to fight doctor octopus from destroying New York city from a nuclear attack.
February 28, 2014
A fun story. I have never read anything like this before, and I'm glad I finally did. It read a little like a novelization of a spiderman animated movie. Very visual in the descriptions. Lots of build with a good plot and a tidy (but somewhat predictable) final battle with the bad guy.
August 23, 2011
The final volume in Duane's Spider-Man trilogy. Works pretty well, wraps things up nicely.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews