Don't make me laugh! If there really is a giant lizard down south, Spider-Man will never tackle him! He'd rather stay here, fighting two-bit hoods and making a rep for himself! 
Appearing in "Face-to-Face with... the Lizard!"
Featured Characters:
Supporting Characters:
- Daily Bugle Staff
- ⏴ Flash Thompson ⏵
- ⏴ Liz Allan ⏵
- ⏴ Aunt May Parker ⏵
- ⏴ Martha Connors ⏵ (First appearance) (Main story and flashback)
- ⏴ Billy Connors ⏵ (First appearance) (Main story and flashback)
Antagonists:
- ⏴ The Lizard (Curt Connors) ⏵ (Origin revealed) (First appearance) (Appears in flashback)
- Museum Gunmen
Other Characters:
- Fats Domino (Mentioned)
Races and Species:
- Humans
- Dinosaurs (Corpse, skeleton or other remains)
- Tyrannosaurus rex (Corpse, skeleton or other remains)
- Angels (Mentioned)
- Lizards (Only in flashback)
- Rabbits (Only in flashback)
- Snakes
- Crocodiles (Mentioned)
- Alligators
Locations:
- Earth-616 (Main story and flashback)
- Earth (Main story and flashback)
- North America (Main story and flashback)
- United States of America (Main story and flashback)
- New York
- Florida (Main story and flashback)
- Everglades
- An Old Abandoned Spanish Fort (Deep in the Swamp)
- The Connors' Home (First appearance) (Main story and flashback)
- Everglades
- United States of America (Main story and flashback)
- North America (Main story and flashback)
- Heaven (Invoked)
- Earth (Main story and flashback)
Items:
- Spider-Man's Suit and Web-Shooters
- Spider-Man's Spider-Signal
- Daily Bugle Newspaper
- Connors Formula (First appearance)
Events:
- World War II (Mentioned) (Topical Reference)
Synopsis for "Face-to-Face with... the Lizard!"
When reports of a humanoid-lizard (naturally dubbed "The Lizard") come out of Florida, Daily Bugle publisher J. Jonah Jameson issues a challenge to Spider-Man: Defeat the Lizard. Hearing about this, Peter goes to see what Jameson's intentions are. He learns that Jameson only issued the challenge to sell more papers.
Later, while at the Natural History Museum with his classmates, Peter takes an express interest in the lizard exhibits. When crooks try to rob the museum and take Liz Allan, hostage, Peter slips away and changes into Spider-Man and comes to her rescue. Hearing another report of an attack by the Lizard in Florida, Peter decides to take Jameson's challenge. As Spider-Man, Peter pays Jameson a visit to take him up on his challenge, in the hopes that he'd send Peter Parker to Florida to take pictures of the event. The plot works, however, it backfires ever so slightly: Jameson himself is going to accompany the boy in order to supervise him.
When they arrive in Florida, Peter makes an excuse of needing to buy film for his camera to get away from Jameson. As Spider-Man, Peter checks out his only lead: Curtis Connors, a resident expert on lizards. However, when he arrives at the Connors home, Spider-Man learns from Curt's wife that her husband is the Lizard: He was trying to find a way to allow humans to grow back limbs. Since Connors had lost his arm in the war, he used himself as a guinea pig on the project. While his arm grew back, the side effects of the serum he created caused him to transform into the Lizard.
The Lizard then attacks the Connors home, and Spider-Man defends them. He then works in Connors' lab to create an antidote for the serum, in the hopes that it can change Connors back to normal. Going into the swamp to find the Lizard, he finds him and his army of obedient reptiles in an old castle. Setting up his camera to take pictures, Spider-Man battles the Lizard and eventually slips him the antidote which changes the Lizard back into his human form.
Connors thanks Spider-Man for his help, and they all decide to keep mum about the fact that Connors was the Lizard, as he had no control over what he did while in that form. Returning to a furious Jameson as Peter Parker, when Peter offers him the pictures (which he said he bought off a local) Jameson dismisses them as fakes and tears them up. He then tells Parker that this dud of a trip is coming out of his future pay.
Upon returning to New York, Peter tries his luck getting a date with Liz Allan, which ends with her hanging up on him because she is expecting a call from that dreamy Spider-Man. As a round-up to his adventure to Florida, Peter sends Jameson a mocking letter to the Bugle.
Notes
Continuity Notes[]
- Some details of this story should be considered topical references per the Sliding Timescale of Earth-616. These are: When Spider-Man makes reference to Fats Domino, details about the layout of LaGuardia Airport (such as the fact that Peter and Jameson boarded the plane from the tarmac), the type of plane used to fly to Florida.
- Likewise, this story states that Curt Connors lost his arm during World War II. This should also be considered a topical reference. Modern readers should interpret this as Connors being in the military and lost the arm in combat.
Chronology Notes[]
A flashback in this story affects the chronology of the following characters:
Trivia
- There is a mistake on page 16: after Lizard was thinking about his powers, Spider-man replies as if Lizard was talking.
- On page 19, Curt Connors mentions that he is holding his wife in his "arms," although he has only one arm at this point.
- The cover of this issue is one of the 32 that appear in the comic collection from the 2000 video game Spider-Man.
- In June 2012, this issue was reprinted and included in a Walmart preview bundle pack to promote the then-upcoming film The Amazing Spider-Man, whose main villain was The Lizard.
