Lizard (character)

• 1. Introduction

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  In The Amazing Spider-Man #6, published in November 1963, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko introduced the Lizard. He is a Marvel Comics monster whose human side is a scientist named Dr. Curtis Connors, known as Curt.

  Connors wanted one thing. He wanted his missing right arm back. What he got instead was a second self that has dogged him, and Spider-Man, for decades.

  The Lizard began as a straightforward enemy of Spider-Man. Over time, writers also made him a tragic antihero and an occasional ally. Sometimes Connors helps Spider-Man as himself, with no scales in sight.

  That shift raises questions. When one body holds two minds, which of them is really in charge? Why does a cure keep failing? And what happens to a family when the man they love keeps vanishing into a monster?

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• 2. The Everglades Experiment

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  Coral Gables, Florida, is where Curtis Connors was born. He grew into a gifted surgeon and enlisted in the U.S. Army. There he performed emergency surgery on wounded soldiers. A wartime blast injured his right arm, and the arm was amputated.

  Back in civilian life as a research technologist, Connors became fixated on how reptiles regrow lost limbs. He worked from his home in the Florida Everglades. His war buddy Ted Sallis helped him. Together they produced an experimental serum made from reptile DNA.

  A rabbit came first. The serum regrew the animal's missing limb. That success convinced Connors to test the formula on himself. He swallowed it, and a new arm did grow.

  But the formula had a side effect. Connors turned into a reptilian humanoid monster.

  Newspaper reports about the creature in Florida drew Spider-Man south. His employer, the Daily Bugle, had challenged him to look into it. Spider-Man discovered the creature's true identity and origin. He then used Connors's own notes to build an antidote that restored his human form and mind.

  A second attempt to make the serum safe turned Connors into the Lizard again. This time, Professor X and his first team of X-Men came to the rescue. Beast and Angel tracked the Lizard through the swamps. It was Iceman who sent the creature into hibernation, long enough for a cure to be developed.

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• 3. Two Minds, One Body

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  Empire State University in New York City became Connors's next base. There he repaid Spider-Man with a formula that saved May Parker. Peter Parker had given his aunt his radioactive blood in a transfusion, and that had put her in mortal peril.

  It soon became clear that his cure had been short-lived. A pattern took hold. Stress or a chemical reaction turned Connors into the Lizard. Spider-Man fought him, then forced him to swallow the antidote. The cycle ran until the next trigger.

  Behind the pattern stood a second personality that formed alongside the reptile body. Like many villains, it wanted to take over the world. The Lizard imagined every human transformed into, or replaced by, super-reptiles like himself. Yet he was often unwilling to harm Martha, Connors's wife, or Billy, their young son.

  Connors's fear of losing his body for good shapes nearly every story. He lives in constant dread that the Lizard will take over completely and irreversibly. So he works tirelessly toward a permanent cure, which worries Martha and Billy. That sets him apart from other Spider-Man foes, who take pride in their powers and use them irresponsibly.

  The same chemistry that made him dangerous also made him useful. Connors developed a formula to dissolve the Rhino's bulletproof hide. Exposure to the chemicals turned him into the Lizard, and Spider-Man restored him. Later, kidnappers forced him to create a rejuvenation serum for Silvermane. The stress changed him again, and the Lizard fought Spider-Man and the Human Torch.

  A bite from Morbius once gave the Lizard Connors's personality, spread by a strange enzyme. This came after Peter's attempt to remove his own powers left him with four extra arms. Connors then used the enzyme to make an antidote for himself and Spider-Man.

  Connors also stood beside Spider-Man, Ka-Zar and Black Panther against Stegron. After the apparent death of the Jackal, he determined that Spider-Man was not a clone. Stegron later kidnapped Billy, and the Lizard battled both Stegron and Spider-Man. For a time, Peter worked as Connors's teaching assistant. Connors had no idea his student was Spider-Man. Together they dealt with the Iguana, one of Connors's earlier experiments.

  In the first Secret Wars, the Beyonder gathered the Lizard along with other villains. The Lizard had slipped back into a primitive state and refused to fight for either side. After the first battle he broke away and settled in a swamp. There the Wasp befriended him after helping to treat an injury he had suffered in that battle. Only a blast of the Enchantress's magic returned him to human form.

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• 4. Voodoo, Clones, Civil War

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  Calypso, a villainess who used voodoo magic, seized control of the Lizard during the Torment storyline. She reduced him to a mindless, savage state. After a series of bloody battles, Spider-Man defeated both of them. He assumed the Lizard had died under her spell.

  He had not. Connors regained control of the Lizard's mind and body, though only weakly. He carried out a plan to cure himself temporarily. Then he voluntarily locked himself in the supervillain prison known as the Vault. Calypso forced the transformation and tried to control the Lizard once more. This time the creature killed her and escaped.

  A quicksand pit in the Everglades seemed to end the story. The Lizard fell into it during a battle with Spider-Man and the bounty hunter Warrant, and was believed dead.

  Then a huge, bestial Lizard appeared. Connors had just been called in to investigate Peter Parker's sudden sickness, which came from his recently lost spider-powers returning. Spider-Man, in the form of Ben Reilly, realized the Lizard had survived. This new transformation looked permanent, and Connors's personality seemed lost. But the savage creature unexpectedly met Dr. Connors himself, who was helping Peter. Curt became the true Lizard again and saved his family by killing what was called the Lizard clone.

  The clone was a scientific accident. An experimental formula, tested on a piece of the original Lizard's tail, had grown the piece into a fully formed second creature.

  Norman Osborn later schemed to assemble the Sinister Twelve to kill Spider-Man, and the Lizard was part of the plan. Daredevil, the Fantastic Four and the Avengers combined to defeat and capture the team.

  In 2004, a story arc called Lizard's Tale, written by Paul Jenkins in Spectacular Spider-Man, rewrote the rules. It revealed that the Lizard was not a separate personality at all. Curt had been consciously controlling his reptilian alter ego all along. The story also showed him knowing Peter Parker was Spider-Man, though how he found out was never explained or shown. It ended with Connors deliberately getting himself sent to prison, hoping the Lizard would not be unleashed again. Yet the Lizard's next appearance, as part of the Sinister Twelve, showed no sign that Connors's mind guided him. The idea of Connors in command was subsequently ignored.

  During the superhero Civil War, a new Sinister Six including the Lizard appeared, but Captain America and his Secret Avengers stopped it. Afterward, Connors helped Spider-Man develop a cure for the victims of Mister Hyde, who had been mutated with unstable versions of Spider-Man's powers. He also kept watch on Komodo, a female grad student who stole a sample of his Lizard formula. She modified it for her own DNA to regrow her missing legs and gain reptilian powers.

  The 2008 Brand New Day storyline found Connors experimenting with animal stem cells and helping forensic specialist Carlie Cooper. The third Freak mistook his stem cell work for drugs, and Connors helped Spider-Man defeat the Freak in their second encounter.

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• 5. A Monster Without Connors

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  The pharmaceutical company Phelcorp employed Connors during The Gauntlet, under an executive named Brian King. Connors had lost custody of his son, Billy. He had begun hearing the Lizard's voice, goading him to hand over control. After Connors's assistant slept with King, he struggled to contain the Lizard. King then stopped him from taking a dose of his Lizard-suppressing antidote, and Connors lost the fight. As the Lizard, he devoured King as a rival male.

  Peter Parker swung to the home of Billy's foster parents to protect the boy. He found Billy kidnapped and the new parents held hostage by Ana Kravinoff. Ana had left Billy in an alley, where the Lizard ate him. The trauma functionally destroyed the Connors persona.

  With Connors no longer fighting from within, the Lizard went through a metamorphosis. He emerged leaner, with long brown spikes on his head and more spikes on his right forearm. He kept human intelligence. He could now telepathically speak to the underdeveloped lizard hindbrain portion of human brains.

  He proved it on Spider-Man by triggering his instinctual prey response. The hero fled in terror. On the street, the Lizard then triggered the lizard portion of many people's brains, making them behave in savage and often violent ways.

  Spider-Man swallowed some of Connors's suppressant formula, which made him temporarily immune. He then injected the Lizard with it, hoping Connors would take control. Connors did not return. But the formula strengthened the Lizard's "monkey brain," the human intelligence portion. He began to regret some of his actions, including killing Billy and pushing people toward their lizard instincts. He reverted most of the people he had affected and vanished into the sewers.

  During Origin of the Species, the Lizard joined Doctor Octopus's supervillain team and stole Menace's baby. As Doctor Octopus and Spider-Man fought in the hideout, the Lizard first attacked Spider-Man, then gladly returned the child. He had already taken a blood sample and learned that Norman Osborn was not the father. That made the baby useless to the villains. Angry that the Lizard's hypnotism obstructed his own intellect, Doctor Octopus attacked him. Both survived.

  While investigating kidnappings in New York, the X-Men found themselves working with Spider-Man. The abductor was the Lizard, who was turning victims into lizard people while holding control over the city's reptiles. The Dark Beast had given him these abilities with a machine. The Lizard shifted Gambit, Storm and Wolverine into lizard people. Emma Frost and Spider-Man escaped the machine's effects, freed the Lizard and used him to defeat the Dark Beast. The Dark Beast was arrested, and the Lizard escaped.

  Michael Morbius later discovered that the Lizard had used DNA samples from Billy Connors's corpse to restore Curt Connors to humanity. The Lizard's psyche was still present and pretending to be Connors so he would be left alone. He released blood into the air supply to provoke Morbius into attacking the lab workers. He tried to recreate his original Lizard formula to change again. Morbius's cure instead let him regrow his missing arm.

  The Lizard injected Max Modell and other Horizon Labs personnel with his formula, hoping to learn how to cure himself. Then he cut off the regrown limb to seem like the normal Connors. Slowly he began to appreciate human life. When he found the correct serum, he even contemplated remaining human. He took the cure only when Spider-Man arrived and threatened him with custody. The result was yet another streamlined form.

  Spider-Man speculated about the Lizard's hostility toward humans. The other lizard people at Horizon Labs did not share it. He suggested it came from Connors's anger at the world for his lost arm and family, and that the Lizard might not be wholly separate from Connors after all.

  A new cure worked for the lab employees but failed on the Lizard's new form. He was knocked out and taken to the Raft. Spider-Man visited him there, unaware that the serum had restored Connors's psyche. Connors stayed in prison willingly, feeling he deserved it for his actions as the Lizard.

  In the "Dying Wish" storyline, Trapster, Hydro-Man and the Scorpion freed Peter Parker, whose mind was trapped in Doctor Octopus's dying body. Trapster offered to free the Lizard too, but Connors declined. When Morbius escaped his cell, the Lizard pointed out he still had nowhere to go. For unknown reasons, Morbius freed him anyway.

  Later, Alistair Smythe tried to escape the decommissioned Raft and briefly shut down its power. That opened the Lizard's cell. He protected J. Jonah Jameson from the Scorpion and revealed that he had the mind of Curt Connors. The Lizard said he "will never let the monsters win again." Jameson defended him to the Raft's warden, called him a hero and protested the use of a restraining device. The Lizard himself preferred to be cautious. During Smythe's final escape attempt, the Lizard was impaled through the shoulder but survived.

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• 6. The Family Left Behind

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  Martha Connors reached her limit after the first Secret Wars. Curt had said he was permanently cured. Then he disappeared for many days and came home in tattered clothing, with no believable explanation. She took Billy and separated from him.

  Inter-dimensional teleportation had affected the Lizard, so that Connors's mind presided over the creature. He battled the Owl alongside Spider-Man. But mystical activity during Inferno brought the bestial nature back to the fore, and Spider-Man cured him again.

  Martha and Billy were reunited with Curt after his apparent death. Soon both were diagnosed with cancer. They had been exposed to carcinogens from living near an industrial lab in Florida. Spider-Man helped Curt force Monnano, the lab's owner, to admit culpability. Martha died of her cancer. Billy recovered but stayed bitter toward his father.

  Guilt and internalized anger turned Curt into the Lizard once again. Once human, he tried to rob a bank so that he would be sent to prison. After a short-lived term he was released.

  Later the Lizard resurfaced to face Spider-Man with Billy's help. Curt had changed his son into an adolescent Lizard. Both were captured and reverted.

  Billy, curiously, never really grew up on the page. Unlike many other Marvel Comics children, he has not appreciably aged since the 1960s stories. His visible age wavers between about eight and 13, depending on which artist draws him.

  In the Andry Corrections Facility, a mysterious red-suited man visited the Lizard. The guards removed his restraints and left. The Lizard caught familiar scents that could not possibly be there and warned the man not to toy with him. The man said that inside, the Lizard was Curt Connors, a model prisoner who had saved Mayor J. Jonah Jameson and many civilians. Then he snapped his fingers, and Martha and Billy stepped forward, apparently alive. The Lizard tearfully accepted his deal.

  The revived pair were clones. The red-suited man had grown them with false memories that stretched all the way to their deaths. When the Carrion virus infected Martha, Billy and the other clones, the Lizard injected Martha and Billy with his formula. It turned his wife and son into lizard people like himself.

  Connors was later back at Empire State University, using a special chip implanted in the back of his neck. It inhibited the Lizard persona and stopped him from attacking humans. He offered to support Peter Parker's efforts to reapply for his doctorate. Peter had been academically disgraced by accusations of plagiarizing Otto Octavius's thesis, because Doctor Octopus's mind was in Peter's body at the time. The chip proved a disadvantage when Taskmaster and Black Ant attacked Connors's class and he could not defend himself.

  Kraven the Hunter then captured Connors during an organized hunt for animal-themed villains. Kraven locked him in a cell with Spider-Man. The two watched live footage of Black Cat and the Lizard-like Billy being hunted. Billy admitted that he actually remembers his original death. Connors asked Spider-Man to tear out the chip so he could save his son, despite the risk of leaving Connors paralyzed at best. Kraven had arranged the situation to push Spider-Man toward becoming the ruthless warrior Kraven believes he should be. But Connors kept control and retrieved Billy without killing anyone.

  In a prelude to the Sinister War storyline, Doctor Octopus coerced Connors into using the Isotope Genome Accelerator on himself. It separated Connors from his Lizard self and made the Lizard a separate being.

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• 7. Claws, Tail and Telepathy

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  A gecko's trick lets the Lizard climb walls. Sharp claws and micro-scales on his hands and feet create molecular friction like a gecko's. In human form, Connors has none of his superhuman powers. He is, however, highly intelligent and a well known scientist in genetics, physics, biochemistry and herpetology.

  As the Lizard, his strength rises to superhuman levels. His speed, stamina, agility and reflexes climb to a level equivalent to Spider-Man's. A thick scaly hide lets him resist punctures and lacerations from ordinary weapons and lower-caliber firearms. Enhanced healing lets him quickly recover from grievous wounds, even regrowing lost limbs. He also has a powerful tail that he can whip at high speeds.

  His razor-sharp teeth and muscular jaws can deliver a lethal bite. That detail was established in later appearances. In his earliest ones, he seems to have no teeth at all.

  Like a reptile, the Lizard is cold-blooded. A sufficiently cold environment slows his metabolism drastically, and he becomes dormant if exposed to cold for too long.

  Within a mile of himself, the Lizard can mentally communicate with and command all reptiles through limited telepathy. On at least one occasion, he also secreted powerful pheromones that made nearby humans behave violently. After Brand New Day, his telepathy grew stronger. He could compel humans to act out their primal urges by suppressing emotional control in the amygdala, the so-called lizard brain.

  His intelligence swings with physiological and environmental factors, from bestial to fully human. Most often the Lizard personality shows human intelligence, capable of speech and higher reasoning, though some versions are more feral. During Secret Wars, he showed concern for Volcana and the Wasp after they were kind to him, despite his usual disdain for humans.

  Even at human level, the Lizard is rarely as intelligent as Dr. Connors. On many occasions he cannot grasp his human self's work well enough to use it. The later Lizard, who apparently destroyed the Connors persona, began to show some of Connors's human emotions. He proved able to replicate Connors's work himself, though he remains hampered by an inability to fully comprehend human emotions.

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• 8. Many Lizards

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  In the Ultimate Marvel universe, Curt Connors is a friend of Reed Richards who created the Carnage symbiote and goes on to join S.H.I.E.L.D. In Marvel 1602, Connors is a philosopher whose transformed state resembles a Velociraptor and who keeps his human mind. On Earth-65, Peter Parker was the first Lizard, with Harry Osborn and Curt Connors succeeding him.

  Earth-66 offers the strangest version. There the Lizard is an ordinary lizard who seeks revenge on Spider-Rex after Spider-Rex accidentally rips off his tail. His wife Lizzy and Spider-Rex both insist the tail would have grown back. Instead, the Lizard uses a meteorite fragment to become a chimera and eventually gets a human form.

  The 1967 Spider-Man cartoon featured a character based on the Lizard named Curt Conner, or the Lizard Man, voiced by Gillie Fenwick. In the episode "Where Crawls the Lizard," he works on a serum meant to cure "swamp fever," and it transforms him. Joseph Campanella voiced Dr. Curt Connors in Spider-Man: The Animated Series, which opened with the episode "Night of the Lizard." In that version, Connors tests lizard DNA on himself, hoping to regenerate his right arm.

  Rob Zombie voiced the character in Spider-Man: The New Animated Series. In "Law of the Jungle," Connors is Peter Parker's science teacher at Empire State University. He lost his right arm in an accident while testing an Oscorp Industries explosive round and transforms on purpose to take revenge. The episode ends with the Lizard falling to his death after a battle with Spider-Man.

  Dee Bradley Baker voiced Connors in The Spectacular Spider-Man. There, Connors and Martha employ Eddie Brock as a lab assistant and Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy as interns. In Ultimate Spider-Man, the Lizard joins the Sinister Six and gains the ability to mutate others with his bite. In that show's series finale, "Graduation Day," Doctor Octopus turns Crossbones into a new incarnation of the Lizard.

  Dylan Baker played Curt Connors in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy as a former college classmate and friend of Otto Octavius. He never becomes the Lizard in those films, though Raimi, Baker and producer Grant Curtis expressed interest in exploring it in sequels.

  Rhys Ifans portrayed Connors and the Lizard in The Amazing Spider-Man (2012). This Connors is an Oscorp biologist and former partner of Richard Parker, driven by the loss of his right arm and a desire to do genuine good. His Lizard is more feral than most, though it keeps Connors's intelligence. It wears no clothes and has a less pronounced snout. Ifans returned in Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021). Doctor Strange imprisons him alongside other displaced villains, and the second Parker eventually cures him.

  The Lizard has appeared as a boss in many video games, including The Amazing Spider-Man (1990) and Spider-Man (2000). In Spider-Man 2 (2004), he was planned for the main console release but scrapped for time. Lizard-like enemies remain in its arena mode. In Spider-Man: Friend or Foe, he is a playable anti-hero searching the Earth for a cure. In Lego Marvel Super Heroes, he can switch between his human and reptilian forms at will.

  In Insomniac Games's Spider-Man series, Connors is an Oscorp scientist and personal physician to Harry Osborn. In Spider-Man 2 (2023), a flashback shows Connors losing his arm while accompanying Oscorp in procuring a meteorite that held the Venom symbiote.

  Toy collectors have been served too. Mego, Toy Biz, Hasbro, Art Asylum and Bowen Designs all made figures, mini-busts or statues of the Lizard.

  In 2009, IGN ranked the Lizard 62nd on its list of the Greatest Comic Villains of All Time. A 2015 listing of Marvel Comics monsters placed him ninth. In 2022, CBR.com ranked him fifth among the 10 Most Violent Spider-Man Villains.

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