The Lizard In Animation - A Retrospective

[Stu]

With his upcoming appearance on The Spectacular Spider-Man days away, I thought now would be a great time to look back on The Lizard. The images appear courtesy of Marvel Animation Age and the 1981 Solo Spider-Man Site.

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One of this writer’s favourite villains in all of comic books, The Lizard is a classic Jekyll and Hyde character, which one being an honest, honourable and likeable scientist with his alter ego being a vicious, evil and horrifying monster who terrorizes the sewers, causing no end of grief for both Spider-Man, Dr. Connors and his family.

Originally appearing in Amazing Spider-Man #6 by comic book legends Stan Lee and Steve Dikto, The Lizard has ranked among many Spidey fans favourite villains and as such, as become something of a staple when it comes to other being translated to other mediums. Indeed, The Lizard has appeared in video games, action figure toy lines and most fans seem to be clamouring for Dr. Conners to finally start his research to regenerate his lost limb in order for The Lizard to have his long awaited big screen smackdown with the webslinger in Spider-Man 4. The villain has struck a chord with Spider-Man fans, perhaps because he is one of those Spider-Man villains who reflects greatly on Peter Parker as Parker and Doc Connors are friends but The Lizard considers Spider-Man to be a deadly enemy, therefore Spider-Man is often forced to hurt Conners in order to save him.

Since we’re here to talk about cartoons, let us being with The Lizard’s animated appearance. It would of course be 67 Spider-Man where the reptilian first encountered Spider-Man on the small screen in the show’s third episode, Where Crawls The Lizard. The episode follows the loose plot of Amazing Spider-Man #6 but comes up with an interesting twist, rather than travelling to Florida under orders from J. Jonah Jameson as he did in the comic, Spider-Man tricked Jameson into sending into the swamp as he wanted to know if he could beat the strange Lizard creature – one of the main things I love about 67 Spider-Man and even the old Spider-Man comics is the dreaded Spider-Man ego, his head can occasionally get very big and the character can get a little full of himself. It puts some off – when they did it in Spider-Man 3, I remember some people saying that that version of Peter was too far removed from the likeable lad in the prior two instalments. Bollocks to them, I say. I think it makes him more relatable personally, as someone who has often struggled to stop sounding so big headed myself, I’ve taken a liking to seeing Peter occasionally marvel in his own brilliance. The typical Parker luck is always there to bring him back to Earth of course, but it is fun to see his fall from grace, so to speak.

Back to the cartoon, after smart mouthing his way to a free trip to Florida from the dim witted yet fearless publisher of The Daily Bugle, Spider-Man searches the swamp in anticipation for his smackdown with the “Lizardman” as this show would call him. Upon finding Dr. Conner’s lab, he is attack by a 6ft Lizard who attempts to drag him into the swamp to fight him there. He manages to fend the creature off but admits that he is far stronger than he initially imagined. Upon meeting Billy Conner (notice the lack of ‘s’ at the end of the name of Conner) and eventually speaks to his Mother about Dr Conner and his experiments in the lab. He learns that Conner was attempting to cure swamp fever but his experiments eventually turned him into the Lizardman. Using Conner’s notes and his own smarts (“Boy, being a science student sure comes in handy!) he devises a cure and after a lengthy fight with The Lizard in a run down castle ala Amazing #6, he administers the cure and Lizardman returns to normal. It’s pretty much a straightforward adaptation of The Lizard’s original origin tale with a few minor tweaks.

This version of Curt Conner has two arms and his experiments, as mentioned above, are to cure swamp fever – he doesn’t study reptilian cellular regeneration here – this change doesn’t bother me that much, I actually rank Where Crawls The Lizard as one of my favourite episodes. Lizardman is a little goofy both in design and casting but it’s forgivable given the tone of the show – it was at it’s best when it was a comedy because trying to make a villain a serious threat in a 1960’s cartoon wasn’t going to happen.

Curt and Billy Conner would return in Fountain Of Terror when this show’s version of Kraven The Hunter, whose actual name escapes me, kidnaps Dr. Conner’s and Spider-Man flies to Florida to show the Oz a piece of mind and let him taste a piece of his fist. I don’t remember much of Conner’s involvement as he only appeared for a few moments at the end – I just remember young Billy annoying the hell out of me as most young boys in cartoons do.

The Lizardman would make one more appearance in the 67 show, to my annoyance. I’ll spare you my usual tirade about the second and third seasons of Spider-Man and take the time to inform you that Where Crawls The Lizard was one of the few episodes to be cut up randomly into an all new, barely plausible for an excuse for an episode which simply features the old animation over new backgrounds, only this time around The Lizard/Lizardman isn’t actually Dr Conner – when Spider-Man administers the potion (which must’ve caused a wicked sense of déjà vu for the webbed wonder) the creature simply disappears off screen and is never seen off again.

It was really dumb. I’m not even going to attempt to add logic to it.

The Lizard would have many chances to redeem himself via his plethora of appearances on the small screen. Would the 80’s be as harsh as on him as they were on everyone else who had to live through them?

 

[Miyamoto Musashi]

Curt and Billy Conner would return in Fountain Of Terror when this show’s version of Kraven The Hunter, whose actual name escapes me

His name is Clive or Kliventon.

Connors in this show has a big resemblance to Eddie Brock in Spider-Man: tas

 

[Hypestyle]

ah.. a classic Lizard ep.. though the later Bakshi episode rehashed stuff in a weird way to make it seem like it was a separate monster from Conners.. heh..

I remember he later showed up in the solo '81 Spider-Man show, but never in Amazing Friends.. on that note I was kind of disappointed.. but I'm glad he showed up as a recurring character in the 90's show..

 

[Stu]

The 1981 Spider-Man show is a tricky one – while I admit this paragraph will no doubt raise the ire of the terrific Jon Talpur, it’s always been one of those shows that’s just there to me – there’s nothing especially bad about it and I have a great fondness for the visuals but a lot of the stories are usually pretty ho-hum. It’s quite different from the other 1980’s cartoons in order to help capture the tone from the Spider-Man comics but there’s something so ho-hum about it for me, even though it did one of the more daring storylines of any 1980’s cartoons with Spider-Man’s long running feud with Dr. Doom spread throughout the show’s run. I suppose it’s because of it’s villain of the week formula and the fact that his relationship’s rarely progress – he always seems to find himself in the same place with Betty Brant, and it’s never one he’s happy with.

In retrospect, I think I’ve been spoiled by the 1990’s show and found it a little difficult to go back and watch this show two decades on (I’m not old enough to remember when this show first aired, it started 5 years before I was born). I will give credit where credit is due though – they’ve realised that Spider-Man is a smart mouthed superhero who simply years for a normal life which he can’t have because his own selfish earlier actions will forever haunt him and now must suffer through the cruel injustices of life while optimistically hoping that things will eventually get better while the audience knows better. This version of Peter Parker is very relatable – most of his problems involve, rent, the aforementioned Betty and his studies. This isn’t some galaxy hoping superhero or some idiot who decided it would be a good idea to unmask in public and forget about the danger this would put his family in – this is me and you – one could argue that this is arguably one of the best versions of Peter Parker we’ve ever seen animated. No Nicholas Hammond hair here!

But this is the day of The Lizard – how does the future handbag fair in the 1980’s show?

Not very well, I am sad to say. Lizards, Lizards Everywhere, despite it’s catchy title, is a pretty ho hum episode which sees Spider-Man battling very reptiles under The Lizard’s control while battling a cold (which is ironic, at present time I’m trying to overcome a fearsome dose of Stu Flu – there, now I’ve got something to blame the typing/spelling errors on!). Regrettably, this show’s version of the Lizard doesn’t even mention Dr. Connors – there’s no difficulty with duality here, the Lizard is simply another supervillain with some aspirations about reptiles taking over the city. They’ve missed out on what defines the character for me and the episode suffers for it tremendously.

To speak of the positive, The Lizard has a truly fantastic design, even by this show’s high standards. I was always more fond of the later versions of Lizard with the reptilian beak (for lack of a better term) rather than just a the Dikto/Romita face covered in scales and The Lizard’s facial design here is absolutely fantastic, not at all like the comedy version of the 67 show. The rest of it is as faithful to the original comic book you can be – although one does wonder why The Lizard would dress up like a scientist if Dr. Connors’ isn’t trapped somewhere inside that leathery interior. The Lizard has always been one of my favourite visuals for a villain and they didn’t disappoint here. I’m personally hoping that The Lizard is featured in Spider-Man 4, I would love to see what Sam Raimi and co could do with the creature in live action, presuming Raimi decides to stay and helm Spidey’s fourth big screen epic.

Especially seeing how well they tackled his origin in the 1990’s Spider-Man cartoon.

 

[Miyamoto Musashi]

while I admit this paragraph will no doubt raise the ire of the terrific Jon Talpur, it’s always been one of those shows that’s just there to me

Not to mention me. The shows before tas were much better than tas itself. I loved the tas pilot though, it did give us a great portray of the Lizard with his memory and love for his family that breaks through his wild and savage self. 1981 Lizard is like you described him; a simple supervillain with his powers based on Ditko's work on him of his ability to control reptiles. The episode is really funny and the guy with glasses looks like Clark Kent (more than the guy in the phone booth in the next episode of 1981 solo sereis)

Why did you put a picture from the episode: "The X-men adventure"?

 

[Stu]

With Batman: The Animated Series setting an unprecedented quality in American Superhero cartoons in terms of visuals, tone and storytelling and X-Men also being unlike anything Saturday morning audiences had seen at that point big things were expected from FOX, Marvel and the actual audience when Spider-Man finally made his long awaited return to the small screen.

With production apparently rushed from the day the show was announced and the initial story editor being shown the door at an early stage, a new crew of writers were brought into to bring Spidey from the comic book to the small screen, with promises to be more faithful to the essence of Peter Parker than ever before – this show would deal with the complications that Spider-Man and his secret brought into Peter’s life.

In hindsight, using The Lizard as the show’s first villain was a brilliant stroke on the creative teams part. The majority of the first season was the normal villain of the week affair and some of the episodes can be reshuffled without the story becoming lost but this is defiantly the best place to start – as far as villain of the week episodes go, this is probably the best the series ever did and probably explains my fondness for this particular villain.

The episode sees Robbie Robertson approach Peter to see if he can manage to chase down a picture of a gigantic Lizard that has apprantly been roaming the sewers. Believing it to be tabloid nonsense, Peter’s interest does a 180 turn when J. Jonah Jameson states there’ll be a $1000 bonus for whoever gets the scoop on the creature. Armed with his Aunt’s mortgage and his trusty camera, Spider-Man enters the sewer and captures photographic evidence of a huge Lizard footprint. Unsure as to what it actually is, he takes the photo to Dr. Connors in hopes that he has an explanation only to discover The Lizard in Connors’ lab, stealing the Neogenic recombinater.

Having not yet deduced that Connors and the creature are one and the same, Spider-Man decides to investigate further and visit Connors home and manages to speak to his wife before The Lizard again arrives on the scene to attack Eddie Brock, who was also investigating the story under orders from Jameson.

Upon getting his $1000 photo and a couple of one liners at the scaly supervillains expense in one of the show’s finest fight scenes as Spider-Man is forced to fight a villain who is stronger than him for the first time in his career The Lizard flees before he can finish Spider-Man off, at his son’s request.

Margaret Connors then informs Spider-Man of Curt’s research and how he used the Neogenic recombinater to regenerate his lost arm. Spidey is all too familiar with Curt’s research as he had been helping Connor’s with the same and now felt that he was partly to blame – this sequence also has a great shot of Connor’s mid transformation. It’s one of those few outstanding visuals that the one occasionally came up with, but not often enough in this author’s opinion.

Speaking of The Lizard’s design – bravo. Easily one of the best the show ever did. It’s especially awesome in this episode as the animation is superlative throughout – the models are sleek, the city is actually populated and the rain and sewers backgrounds capture the episode’s mood perfectly. The animation in the show never topped this episode – the characters are on model, the blacks are actually black and the whole episode simply looks a lot darker and more befitting to Spider-Man. It’s difficult to explain but watch this and any other episodes (bar maybe the first two instalments of The Alien Costume) and you’ll see the difference in quality very quickly.

Joseph Campanella voiced both The Lizard and Connors in the show and does a stellar job, without just resorting to adding sssssss onto the end of his ever sentence in his reptilian state. He does a good job bringing a likeable, sympathetic voice to family man Curt and a terrifying tone to the Lizard. What impressed me most is how well he managed to capture that middle voice as well – when Curt is controlling The Lizard.

The Lizard has his own motivation here – he wishes for everyone to be like him so they can live better lives and not have to suffer with the pain that comes with being human. One of the things that separated The Lizard from all the other villains in the show is that he has a family – a wife and a son, both of whom are used very well in the show. He’s a very rich character who is both connected to Peter through their friendship and the dual lives they both lead.

Spider-Man defeats The Lizard by blasting him with the Neogenic Recombinater and he reverts to Connors, the nightmare was over all concerned – Peter got his picture and Eddie Brock had no proof to back up his outlandish story that Connors and The Lizard were the same person.

But of course, with Spider-Man: The Animated Series, things were rarely as they seemed. Rather than just dispose of the villain after his defeat, both Connors and The Lizard would become recurring characters throughout the show’s 65 episode run.

 

[Miyamoto Musashi]

"Doctor Octopus: Armed & Dangerous" has the same art & animation style as the pilot episode

 

[Reg]

Man, the Lizard's brain looks like it's about to bust out of his skull in that first pic.

"Night of the Lizard" has some of the best animation of the '90s Spider-Man series. The Lizard has never looked better.

 

[Wonderwall]

"Doctor Octopus: Armed & Dangerous" has the same art & animation style as the pilot episode

Not all of it is, in fact that episode used quite a bit of reused footage while Night of the Lizard barely had any if at all. Though the Doc Ock had the sweet shot of spidey dodging the tentacles on the crates. It seems me and Stu share almost identical opinions on not only this episode but the character itself. So this week's episode of Spectacular has a lot to live up to for me.

 

[Stu]

Rather than simply letting the character go to waste until the next time The Lizard appeared, Dr. Connors became one of the show’s most prominent supporting characters – he was both Peter’s teacher at Empire State University and one of Spider-Man’s most trusted confidants. Having recently bonded with a strange alien costume he found and noticing it was augmenting everyone of his powers and strangely effecting his emotion (particularly aggression) Peter approached Dr. Connors in hopes of studying the suit to learn more about it, especially it’s origins. In what will probably go down as the show’s most memorable scene, Peter originally found himself wearing the costume hanging upside down in the middle of Manhattan.

Connors was originally hesitant to help Spider-Man, as he was now a fugitive but later found himself intrigued with the suit – he learned that it was a symbiote, an organism that thrives by bonding and eventually replacing another. That would be the last we’d see of Doc Connors in season one but he was prominent throughout season two.

In a very ballsy move, Spider-Man spent the season battling a strange mutation disease. The opening of the season deals with Spider-Man dealing with the thought of losing his powers and Conners again examines him. The best part of the story comes in the epilogue of Battle Of The Insidious Six. I love quoting this because I remember seeing it as a boy and simply being beyond intrigued about what the future held for Spider-Man.

SPIDER-MAN: Come on Doc! My powers came back and I feel great! How bad can the test results be?
CONNERS: This bad. The mutagenic factor in your blood has undergone another transformation.
SPIDER-MAN: Did you say mutagenic, as in mutant?
CONNERS: I'm afraid so. Whilst I can't tell you exactly what your DNA is turning you into, one thing’s already clear. It won't be human…

One little speech, Spider-Man’s whole world comes crashing down on him. If you’re familiar with the character, you know that he doesn’t use his ‘normal’ life as a façade so that no one would suspect he is a superhero. He doesn’t wear a pair of glasses and play the fool or pretend to be a billionaire playboy to avoid suspicion as part of his daily routine – Spider-Man wakes up as Peter Parker. Peter Parker is his life, Spider-Man is something Peter feels he has to do but he always tries to build some semblance of a normal life – he dates (or tries to), he goes to school in hopes of one day becoming a somebody in the science field and he tries to make friends. This suddenly took all of that away. He even comments on it in The Mutant Agenda “I’ve never been so frightened in my entire life.”

Curiously, Conners is pushed to the sideline for a few episodes as Dr Mariah Crawford comes to Spider-Man’s rescue as she tries to find a cure for him but ultimately gives him an untested formula which only accelerates his mutation (she really, really needs to stop doing that!) and gives him 6 arms and eventually takes his humanity away as he becomes Man Spider.

They eventually learned that bombarding Spider-Man with the Neogenic recombinater rays kept his mutation disease from flaring for 24 hours and Conners found a more permanent solution of hope for Spider-Man with The Tablet Of Time, an ancient machine which apparently possessed the power to change cells – it was mainly used to make them young again but Conners believed he could’ve cured Spider-Man with it. What he neglected to tell Spidey was that he was also hoping to use it to cure himself…

With The Kingpin deciding that the tablet was far too valuable to be in the possession of someone who might actually do some good with it, he ordered Smythe’s latest attempt at a Spider Slayer to retrieve the tablet and kidnap Conners so he can continue his study of it under the tighter supervision of The Kingpin of crime. With Spider-Man already at the scene to get his daily dose of the Neogenic rays, he saw Curt almost transform into the Lizard before luring the robot away. This is where we learn that Connors mutation is based on his emotions – whenever he becomes too stressed or aggressive, he transforms back into The Lizard.

I dislike these particular episodes – I thought there was far too many characters and too much back and forth, everyone kidnapping someone else, the constant switches and trades and ultimately a lot of the characters weren’t used as well as they should’ve been. The Lizard in part two was especially shameful as he is jobbed to young Silvermaine – this wasn’t the ferocious beast Spidey battled with in Night Of The Lizard – this was a weak imitation of it. The Lizard was utterly wasted here. He made a return appearance in the next storyline as The Neogenic Nightmare drew to its conclusion. It was only a quick appearance towards the later end of the episode but Connors managed to cure Spidey of his mutation disease by transferring it over to The Vulture. Nothing of much merit really happened.

Connors was largely absent for season three and The Lizard didn’t appear at all until the fourth season and you really, really wish they hadn’t have bothered. The Lizard King showcases the show’s fall from grace – the plot’s pretty terrible, the characters aren’t interesting and there’s too many clips used from Night Of The Lizard which only goes to showcase the shocking decline in quality the animation took. The Lizard men race was a pretty silly idea – this, like a lot of season four, was simply a story that we did not need to be told.

Secret Wars would be the Lizard’s next and final appearance in the show. The story sees an intergalactic entity known as The Beyonder studying humans and he becomes fascinated by our concepts of good and evil. In hopes of determining which one is greater, he transports various supervillains from Earth over to a Paradise planet and lets them ruin loose for a year. He then picks Spider-Man to lead a group of heroes to fight the villains to save the planet.

One of his original choices was meant to be The Hulk (and She Hulk, if memory serves) who was to have Banner’s intelligence, much like the comic book at the time. However, with The Incredible Hulk airing over on UPN, FOX didn’t have the rights so the creative team came up with the idea of using The Lizard as a replacement for him. Upon arriving on the planet, the heroes are attacked by The Lizard who breaks free and is injured by the giant worm thingys that surround Spidey’s new crib. Pleading with his team for help, they manage to save The Lizard and Reed Richards and Iron Man analyse his brain and discover that Doc Connors mind is dormant in the beast’s body and do… something to make that part the dominant force, giving Connors control over The Lizard. He didn’t do much after that initial fight but it gave Spider-Man someone he knew to talk to about his struggles leading the time – once again, Connors becomes on of his most trusted confidants. I’m not sure if there was any great need for the character to appear here at all but hell, it was cool seeing Spidey and The Lizard team up and it gave him a better send off than The Lizard King would’ve.

Thankfully spared from Spider-Man: Unlimited, Connors received a name drop in the Spider-Man movie and was one of the few comic book villains translated into MTV’s Spider-Man: The New Animated Series and I for one am really glad they used him.

 

[Nightwing]

The Lizard has his own motivation here – he wishes for everyone to be like him so they can live better lives and not have to suffer with the pain that comes with being human. One of the things that separated The Lizard from all the other villains in the show is that he has a family – a wife and a son, both of whom are used very well in the show. He’s a very rich character who is both connected to Peter through their friendship and the dual lives they both lead.

And don't forget what helps Spiderman save the day, true believers! In a brilliant and symbolic gesture, The Lizard hears Spiderman coming, turns around quickly, and accidentally swats his wife while they're in the sewer talking about how he wants to make everyone into Lizards to help them. He turns back and looks at her. He stops, looks at himself, and realizes the icky sticky mess he has created. I mention this because Toon Disney cut this part out when they aired it!! Idiots!!!

Curiously, Conners is pushed to the sideline for a few episodes as Dr Mariah Crawford comes to Spider-Man’s rescue as she tries to find a cure for him but ultimately gives him an untested formula which only accelerates his mutation (she really, really needs to stop doing that!) and gives him 6 arms and eventually takes his humanity away as he becomes Man Spider.

I really liked how they used Connors in Season 2, fighting that Spiderman disease. It's really brilliant because it destroys the cynicism you may get when thinking, "oh lovely, the only thing that happens if you make a spider radioactive and have it bite you is you get super powers!"

And how 'bout that ManSpider, huh? I never did care for his theme song though:

Man-Spider! Man-Spider! Does whatever a OH MY GOD IT'S A BIG SPIDER MONSTER AND HE'S EATING ME! HE'S EAATING MEEE!

 

[Stu]

Well, I completely forgot about this one, didn't I? I'm only... ten months late?

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With the Spider-Man movie receiving far more critical and commercial success than anyone dared dream in 2002, Sony cancelled their plans of a 3D Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon and decided that their new Spider-Man would follow on from the movie to capitalise on it’s success. In a rather bold move, they also decided that this wasn’t going to be aimed at the kiddies – this was going to be aimed at an older audience – it wasn’t kids and comic book nerds who helped the original Spider-Man movie make $800 million, it was general Joe’s. Selling the show to an older audience meant most of the animation networks wouldn’t be interested – Kids WB! is a kiddie grabbing demographic and is notorious for ignoring older audiences, CN was and still is in a shocking state and… there’s not really a lot of networks that want cartoons.

So it went to MTV and essentially doomed itself.

MTV came with many mandates, most of which go against Peter Parker. Peter is a nerd – the MTV audience apparently don’t like nerds. He also has an Aunt to look after (and visa versa). MTV don’t like old people – no Aunt May in this show folks! By the time they got around to airing the show, it was clear they didn’t want anything to do with it. Sticking two episodes in the Friday night slot on MTV is pretty much a guaranteed cancellation, but the show actually pulled some of the network’s strongest ratings. Someone noticed, and they began airing one episode on Friday nights to spread the show out a little longer. It still wasn’t enough to save the show, unfortunately.

So how was the show itself? Pretty good, in my opinion. Despite the obvious restrictions and mandates, Spider-Man: The New Animated Series was a very entertaining show. One does wonder how many improvements they could’ve made with a second season – this opening season was much better than that of Justice League, The Batman and Teen Titans, the other superhero cartoons which were running at the time. A lot of people whined that it wasn’t a straight up superhero show – imagine! Those silly creative people for trying to do something different.

The series focuses on Peter’s difficulty with duality and the problems it caused his relationship with Mary Jane and his friendship with Harry, who blamed Spider-Man for the death of his Father. Unfortunately with Spider-Man 2 on the horizon, they weren’t allowed to conclude anything; the majority of the characters were simply spinning their wheels instead of moving forward. There are some good character bits in the show and the three leads are actually really likeable but they didn’t seem to be able to go in their natural direction, there’s a significant lack of growth from each episode. Adding to the confusion was MTV’s silly airdate order which broke the structure of the season’s arc – I admit this wasn’t a huge one, but compared to watching the show on DVD in correct order than from the original TV airdates greatly improved my enjoyment of the series. The show gets ragged on a lot – I realise it’s not for everyone but some people were ignorant to what the show was supposed to be – they pretty much wanted a Batman: The Animated Series that could actually have people killed, show blood and have brutal fight scenes – this was an adults show, well, technically, a teenagers – not a straight up superhero cartoon. Think the first few seasons of Smallville, but animated, and the creative team not pooping their pants at the mere thought of a someone wearing a costume. In that respect, I thought the show did very well. Being that I was the same age as Peter at the time the show aired and was at college, working and struggling with women (ahh, sweet Mel, if only I had an actual reason for speaking to you, other than to tell you I think you’re really pretty!)

The Lizard appeared early in the show’s run and is scribed by Marvel animation stalwart Greg Johnson in what would sadly be his only contribution to the show. Executive producer Audu Paden does a fantastic job directing what may just be some of the very best fight scenes I’ve ever seen animated.

The episode has the benefit of feeling like it actually takes place in the movie’s continuity – this really does feel like something between Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2, had Connors not appeared in Spider-Man 2. Law Of The Jungle sees Harry going through Norman’s estate while Peter returns to work with Dr Connors as his research assistant. Connors himself isn’t the mild mannered scientist as usually depicted – he is much more of an arse to Peter as he is bitter over the loss of his arm which was caused by Oscorp and the Judge threw his case out due to lack of evidence.

Finding promising results in his research into cellular regeneration, he injects himself with the serum and became later becomes a ferocious beast. Unlike previous versions of the character, this one appeared more reptile than man – he couldn’t speak and there was nothing human about his design – he looked more like something out of Jurassic Park than a comic book, which worked extremely well in my opinion. Exacting revenge on a robber who tried to mug him earlier, The Lizard eventually battles Spider-Man at the cop shop and the show delivers a really creepy fight scene between Spidey and The Lizard. I mentioned this in my review at MAA – it’s difficult to do scary scenes in animation but this one had a real Alien vibe about it – The Lizard’s model is kept mostly shadowed as director Audu Paden displays the golden horror rule that Hollywood forgot with all their special FX - the thing that frightens people the most is the unseen monster lurking in the shadows – that way the viewer themselves is left to imagine their worst horror, not just something some dude drew on his computer.

The episode gets more interesting as Conners’ focuses’ his attention to Osborn and tries to exact his revenge for the loss of his arm to Harry – Conners’ willing injects himself here to turn himself into The Lizard again, which is a complete 180 from the classic depiction. It actually works really well in my opinion – again, with the exception of the utterly outstanding finale, this episode is by far the best in the show’s short run time. There’s a really good triangle of friendships turned horrible here – Harry hates Spider-Man, The Lizard hates Harry, Peter likes Harry, Peter likes Curt but they are all fighting each other.

It inevitably reaches it’s conclusion as The Lizard falls from a webline to his doom on the streets below. This show had an odd habit of killing its villains (even stranger, as the returning villain episodes were usually a lot stronger than the introduction ones).

The Lizard would possibly return in the finale as a figment of MJ’s imagination of something that truly frightened her – whether or not it was truly The Lizard or just a decoloured model of a generic monster to save production costs is up to the viewer, and how much they wanted to see an actual fanboy nod in the show.

It was The Lizard really, all right?

The Lizard’s had a pretty good batting record so far in animation. I am thankful to say the next time would be just as spectacular.

 

[The New Titans]

Waiting for the next part! As for my own opinions on Natural Selection, it felt kind of slow at the beginning, and then picked up for the rest of the episode. The Lizard was just awesome, and the fight scenes really complimented him!

 

[Stu]

Given Marvel’s spotty track record with animation, I was instantly excited but still somewhat sceptical of a new Spider-Man cartoon. As enjoyable as it was, the last one got more wrong than right, and this one was announced as going to Kids WB! who had previously spent the past couple of years butchering Batman with their silly attempts to make him cool – what they were essentially trying to do was turn him into Spider-Man and sell a truckload of toys. They never quite got the show they wanted with The Batman so it only made sense to finally cave in and air their own Spider-Man show.

It sounded great on paper – basically Spider-Man: Year One with the show beginning on his first day of high school and meeting his rouges gallery for the first time. Rather than going down the original route as the past 2 shows had tried and utterly failed Spider-Man’s classic villains would appear.

So, after months of hype – people actually knew it was going to air – clearly, someone somewhere learned lessons from the complete lack of promotion Fantastic Four: World’s Greatest Heroes received (and fell promptly on it’s arse because of it!), The Spectacular Spider-Man premiered with Survival Of The Fittest. It would seem that they weren’t kidding when they said they were out to make this the Spider-Man cartoon to remember – for fans of the character, the first episode alone was bursting with stuff to love – the opening fight with Marko and O’Hirn, the introduction of Jameson, Betty, Connors and his family, villains to fight in The Enforcers, The Vulture and the leering threat of The Big Man – there was a lot to take it but it so perfectly paced that you had time to take everything in. The show was bursting with stuff to come back next week for – I love a good hook for a show – I utterly hate villain of the week shows and this clearly set itself out to be something beyond that.

I loved the mystery of who The Big Man but what really intrigued me was Connors injecting himself with an experimental formula in Survival and it’s follow up, Interactions. Natural Selection he finally manages to grow back his arm in a particularly disturbing manor now less – the show made the transformations as ugly as possible and they all really stand out. Whether people are physically growing limbs, having their molecules shattered to sand or metallic arms fused to their spinal cord they all look and sound like they hurt.

When his wife discovers scales growing across Curt’s back they fear the worst and Curt of course transforms into a gigantic savage Lizard. This version doesn’t talk either. This show doesn’t mess around with it’s fight scenes either – they’re all beautifully choreographed pieces which always full use of Spider-Man’s unique abilities and The Lizard offered some of the best yet.

Design wise – I often find a lot of them look too Fisher Price like for me but they animated extremely well so I don’t really care – not The Lizard though – I saw the model sheet for this bad boy and I thought it looked slick straight away. Dee Bradley Barker does a fine job with Connors too.

The highlight of the episode for me is Peter being fired as Martha feels she is unable to trust him after he cashes in by selling photos of The Lizard’s fight with Spider-Man. Immediately pissed that Spider-Man is getting in the way of Peter Parker’s progress, he contemplates using the gene cleanser they used to turn Curt human to rid him of his own powers but decides against it… for now.

I remember hoping to see them follow it up as he kept the formula – it re-emerged in the show’s finale as Peter flushed it down the sink, deciding to remove the easy way out of his responsibilities. It was a great moment for the character, so great in fact, I’ll even ignore the fact that the webbing that held the cleanser under his desk would’ve long melted before he found it again in Nature Vs Nurture.

So in summary then – the Lizard’s latest appearance may have been his best one yet. Hopefully we’ll get a round two!

 

[M.O.D.O.K.]

It was a great moment for the character, so great in fact, I’ll even ignore the fact that the webbing that held the cleanser under his desk would’ve long melted before he found it again in Nature Vs Nurture.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed that.