Amazing Spider-Man foe has background in comics

Spider-Man celebrates his 50th anniversary in 2012, and the character has a new major motion picture, “The Amazing Spider-Man” releasing in theaters as part of the celebration. Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone play Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man, and Gwen Stacy. Rhys Ifans has signed on as Doctor Curt Connors.

Spoilers are ahead for those who don’t know about Connors’s comic-book background.

Though Connors has appeared in two of the three previous “Spider-Man” movies, his comic-book alter ego gets the big-screen treatment for the first time is Spider-Man’s foe the Lizard.

To tie in with the film’s release, a new Lizard storyline begins in this week’s “Amazing Spider-Man” No. 688.

Dan Slott and Giuseppe Camuncoli are the creative team for this story arc, called “No Turning Back.”

The Lizard is a tragic figure in the comics. After army surgeon Curt Connors loses his arm in an explosion, he turns to reptilian DNA to figure out how to regrow his lost appendage. But while he does manage to regrow the limb, the formula he takes to do so turns him into a raging reptilian monster.