Spider-Man: Glow in the Dark Sticker Book (DK)
Background
DK Books is a huge publisher of all sorts of popular books. They currently have a licence to do Spidey stuff, but they seem to be pretty off-hand. They've produced a Spider-Man handbook (by Marvel staffer Tom DeFalco) and a couple of teen/pre-teen offerings. That was a few years ago in 2002.
More recently they've sprung back into action with a new "DK Books Marvel Encyclopedia" (with a subsequent updated edition) and a handful of Marvel and Spidey sticker books.
Story Details
Spider-Man: Glow in the Dark Sticker Book (DK)
| Publisher: | DK Publishing, Inc. |
| Writer: | Alastair Dougall |
| Designer: | Jill Bunyan |
First up, this book is 8.5" x 10.75", soft card cover. List price $7. There are 4 pages of stickers, 4 pages blank reverse of sticker pages, and 8 pages of actual content including scenes for sticking your sticky stickers. There are 60 stickers overall, featuring Spider-Man and various villains - Kingpin, Venom, Carnage, Kraven, Ricochet, Ock, Black Cat, Puma, Hornet, etc. A pretty good mix really.
The scenic art backgrounds are great, the art on the stickers has good detail, and just as promised, there's a 3mm (1/8") border around each sticker which does that good old greeny-yellowy glow-in the dark thing. Of course, in the dark, all you can see is the border, the actual artwork doesn't glow. But hey, it glows, and that's worth something.
The only weakpoint is the text, which is quite innacurate, right from the opening sentence: "Being bitten by a radioactive spider.... was one of the best things that ever happened to shy, studious Peter Parker..." Yeah, right, like he hasn't cursed that day a hundred times. The rest of the text is equally as superficial, and was clearly written by somebody with only a passing knowledge of the stories of the comics.
General Comments
Despite the inaccurate text and the very small number of pages, the rest of the package is nice quality. The paper and printing quality is good, and the glow-effect is indisputably cool. At US$7 this isn't cheap, but it's the only glow-in-the-dark Spidey book you can buy, and I'm sure there will be plenty of kids who will be delighted to own this book.
Overall Rating 
Not exactly perfect, but still overall a quality offering. Four webs.