Spider-Man: Lizard—No Turning Back

Comic Info

Amazing Spider-Man (2) #688 Variant

Reprints Amazing Spider-Man (2) #688-691 and Untold Tales of Spider-Man #9 (May 1996-October 2012).  For years, the Lizard has been a thorn in Spider-Man’s side.  Now, the old Curt Connors is gone and only the Lizard persona is left.  When Morbius reveals that a cure for the Lizard could mean a cure for himself, Dr. Curt Connors is restored…but the Lizard has a way of creeping back into Spider-Man’s life.  Plus, Madame Web has a vision of the future, and Spider-Man isn’t going to like it.

Written by Dan Slott, Spider-Man:  Lizard—No Turning Back is a follow-up to Spider-Man:  Ends of the Earth.  The collection features art by Giuseppe Camuncoli and Mario Del Pennino.  The collection also contains a Lizard story from Kurt Busiek’s Untold Tales of Spider-Man #9 (May 1996) with art by Ron Frenz.  The issues in this collection were also collected in Spider-Man:  Big Time—The Complete Collection Volume 4.

I was always a fan of the Lizard.  Of Spider-Man’s villains, he might have been my favorite (of course Green Goblin was up there as well).  It is hard to do anything new with the Lizard character.  It feels like he’s lost his humanity over and over again, and Spider-Man:  Lizard—No Turning Back just feels like another Lizard story.

I never was a fan of the whole Horizon Labs story of Slott’s run on Spider-Man.  I thought the characters weren’t very interesting and though it made sense to have Peter as part of a think tank, it feels very distant from the heart of the character.  In this collection, you have a lot of Horizon Labs, and characters I don’t really care about.  I kind of wish they had all just been turned into lizards and stayed that way.

Amazing Spider-Man (2) #691

I do like the portion of the story which has the Lizard “hiding” in Curt Connors and trying to pretend to be human.  The Lizard has so little intelligence in the beginning of the collection, that it doesn’t seem possible that he’d be able to pull it off.  If the Lizard had been in a more “human” state of mind, I’d believe it, and the ending with the regained humanity seems cheesy and cliché.

There are a lot of secondary stories going on in the collection as well.  You have Morbius the Vampire essentially getting framed (Curt Connors doesn’t feel like confessing his part in that near the end) and you have the Kingpin’s ultimate plans to get Spider-Man colliding with the Hobgoblin and influencing Madame Web’s visions.  It feels like a good set-up for future stories.

Spider-Man:  Lizard—No Turning Back is a short Slott story that feels like a typical Slott story.  I like it a bit better than some of his outings in the fact that I like the villain and it feels more like a traditional Spider-Man story.  The back-up story from Untold Tales of Spider-Man stings a bit however because I really enjoyed that series and it has me wishing that it was ongoing and not this version of Spider-Man.  Spider-Man:  Lizard—No Turning Back was followed by Spider-Man:  Danger Zone.

Preceded By:

Spider-Man:  Ends of the Earth