Spider-Man’s Weakest Movie Villain Just Became His Most Exciting

Warning: contains spoilers for Amazing Spider-Man #91!

The weakest Spider-Man villain in 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home just became the most exciting in comics. Peter Parker has dozens of supervillains, and most of them are the result of scientific experience gone wrong along with considerable hubris on their part, combined with unattainable goals and and a tragic backstory or two. Amazing Spider-Man #91 showcases a truly horrifying version of the Lizard – the worst No Way Home villain.

Doctor Curt Connors was a medic in the US Army in his original backstory in comics; during the Second World War, he performed emergency battlefield surgery on American soldiers but tragically lost his arm in an explosion. Becoming obsessed with limb regeneration in reptilians, he created a serum to regrow lost appendages and tested it on himself. Conners grew his arm back but was turned into a lizard-human hybrid in the process; as the Lizard, he went insane and envisioned a world in which all humans became similarly enhanced human-reptile hybrids like himself.

In Amazing Spider-Man #91, both Ben Reilly and Peter Parker infiltrate a secret Beyond facility containing a myriad of creatures, including a sentient snowman, a giant chicken, and a human with a squid for a head. The facility also contains a massive door marked Door Z. Despite Maxine Walters’ warnings, Ben Reilly opens Door Z to find the Lizard – but he’s grown to a truly enormous size…and the Beyond Corporation has seen fit to give him wings.

In Spider-Man: No Way Home, the Lizard is arguably the weakest villain of the five presented in the film. He appears without much fanfare, holds fast to his “turn the city into lizards” plan, and isn’t given the character development or scenes of closure given to Electro, the sympathetic Doctor Octopus, Sandman or the Green Goblin. This new development in the comics makes the Lizard frightening again, and also takes away Spider-Man’s main asset in a battle with the villain: his mastery of the air. Spider-Man can always swing above the grounded Lizard during traditional fights, but this monstrosity easily towers over Spider-Man and has wings that are (presumably) capable of lifting the giant beast into the air. Suddenly, Spider-Man’s main method of escape can be countered by Curt Connors.

The teaser image for Amazing Spider-Man #92 involves a massive fight between the flying Lizard and both Spider-Men. It’s unknown if Curt Connors still retained his intelligence during the transformation. If not, then Spider-Man’s worst No Way Home villain just became even more frightening.