Spider-Man (1967) Episode Two: Where Crawls the Lizard / Electro the Human Lightning Bolt

Where Crawls the Lizard

First Aired: September 16th, 1967

Synopsis: Reports of a lizard-like man in the Florida Everglades spread throughout the country, prompting Peter Parker to convince J. Jonah Jameson to send him there so that he can fight him. Spider-Man heads into the swamp and after a brief fight with the Lizard, goes to the house of Doctor Curtis Connors, a local reptile expert. Spider-Man meets Connors' son and wife, and finds out that the man himself is missing.


Searching through Connors' lab, Spider-Man finds a chemical mixture which will turn people into lizards, along with plans for which swamps of the world the Lizard will attack from. The Lizard breaks into the lab, defeats Spider-Man, and takes the mixture away. Spider-Man manages to track him down and feed him a mixture he made which cures the lizard formula, turning him back into his true self: Doctor Curtis Connors. Back in New York, Peter presents Jonah with photos of the Lizard, but Jonah declares that the whole thing must have been a publicity stunt by a movie studio.

Webbing Does Not Work That Way:

• To travel through the swamps, Spidey puts webbing on his feet and...well, it's hard to tell, but he's either holding a small propeller in one hand or he's spinning a small bit of webbing so fast that it's functionally the same thing.

 Miscellaneous Notes

• This story is based on Amazing Spider-Man #6, the first appearance of the Lizard. Some of the scenes are surprisingly well-adapted; in both versions Spider-Man's first encounter with the Lizard has the villain emerging from a pool of water and dragging him in.
• Martha, Billy, and Curtis Connors are all redheads in the cartoon, as opposed to brunette, blonde, and brunette respectively. Between them and Betty Brant, did making characters redheads save on money in some way?
• The Lizard's map of swamps around the world doesn't have anything circled in Australia, in spite of the fact that Australia does have (some) swamps, along with some of the deadliest reptiles in the world. Maybe he realised that if he travelled there, the locals would be used to dealing with dangerous reptiles.
• When the Lizard attacks Spider-Man in Connors' lab, he does so by throwing a grenade. That's something you'd never see the Lizard of the comics do, but honestly, the audacity of him doing so makes it work for me.
• The Lizard turns back to Curt Connors, and in what was probably an unintentional twist, it turns out that he has two arms in this version! Spider-Man mentions that it was Connors' "swamp fever serum" which turned him into the Lizard, so I guess this version never lost an arm.

Review: Going into this I wasn't sure what to expect, but after last episode gave us an original, if fairly forgettable, Doctor Octopus story, I wasn't expecting this story to be such a faithful adaptation of a comic book issue. The story manages to hit the beats of the comic pretty well, fixing up a lot of the pacing issues I didn't enjoy last time, and as in the issue, it's nice to see a villain who Spider-Man manages to stop using science rather than his fists.

The downside, of course, with adapting a comic book story is that any changes are inevitably compared to the original, and in this regard, it's hard to find any that manage to exceed the comic's quality. Unless I missed something (the audio quality of  my episodes isn't the greatest), there was never any explicit mention as to Curt being the Lizard until he's turned back into his human form, and Spider-Man saying that he wants to go to Florida so that he can essentially beat up the Lizard feels a little bloodthirsty for Peter. (Admittedly, though, the comic version has Spider-Man essentially go down there to shut up Jonah complaining about how he's not fighting the Lizard, so no one really comes out of this one looking clean). But then again, these are only issues if you've read the comic story and know it well, so are they really legitimate complaints?

Overall, this is a pretty enjoyable story and managed to raise the bar on my expectations of the show. If it had established the relationship between Peter, Jonah, and Betty in a stronger manner, then it would have made for a great first episode to the show.

Electro the Human Lightning Bolt

Synopsis: Spider-Man is swinging around on a rainy night when he sees lightning bolts shooting out of an apartment. Investigating, he finds new villain Electro robbing J. Jonah Jameson's personal safe. They get into a fight but Electro leaves right before the police arrive, leading to them thinking that it's Spider-Man who robbed Jonah. In spite of Peter Parker having photos catching Electro in the act, Jonah thinks they're fake and is thoroughly convinced that Spider-Man is the thief.

Spider-Man finds Electro again, ready to clear his name, and manages to get a Spider-Tracer onto him. Unfortunately for him, Electro finds it and uses it to trick Spider-Man into being caught by the police at the scene of a crime once more. Spider-Man next manages to track Electro using a homemade detector which will find him based on his electrical current, and gets into a fight with him on Coney Island. After a lengthy brawl, Spider-Man manages to capture Electro, and after delivering him to J. Jonah Jameson, Jonah is forced to admit that Spider-Man couldn't have robbed him.

Miscellaneous Notes

• This story is based on Amazing Spider-Man #9, albeit more loosely than the previous story was based on its issue.
• As mentioned, Spider-Tracers make an appearance in this episode (something that I didn't think we would be seeing in this series at all, to be honest). They only have six legs, but who am I to tell this version of Spider-Man how to design his gadgets? Notably, Spider-Man uses an electronic device to trace the signal here, as he did in their early appearanes. Just a few months before this episode came out, Spider-Man used his spider sense to trace a Spider-Tracer for the first time in Amazing Spider-Man #53 (unless I've missed an earlier appearance of this - someone please tell me if I am wrong).
• When Spider-Man first revealed his homemade detector for tracking Electro, my first thought was, "Wait, wouldn't that simply detect areas that use or generate a lot of electricity?", before dismissing it. As it turns out, after a web-swinging montage prior to finding Electro, Spider-Man comments that "all [it's] registered is the city's electric power plant and a battery company." Good job, writing team!
• In order to give his webbing some insulation against Electro, Spider-Man adds asbestos to it. I hope that mask of his works as a good filter.
• When Spider-Man enters the Hall of Mirrors, where he defeats Electro, he comes in via a giant slide. I've never been in a mirror maze which you entered via slide, but more places need to implement this idea.
• When Electro is delivered to Jonah, Jonah reads out a note which is very clearly displayed to the viewers. I'm guessing that this was done for the benefit of audience members who couldn't read.

Review: As mentioned above, this story doesn't follow its comic inspiration as closely as the previous one, but while it does suffer for it, it's far from unwatchable. The comic issue had a pretty serious subplot about Aunt May being sick which the episode was wise to cut; introducing Aunt May and immediately making her sick probably wouldn't have worked that well. The biggest aspect of the comic book which this episode does draw inspiration from is that of Jonah thinking that Spider-Man robbed him, which ends up being a pretty good angle to tackle. In the other stories prior to this one, Jonah has mostly been comic relief and a plot device to get Peter to where he needs to be; now, he gives a personal motivation for Spider-Man to go after the villain: to clear his name.

Unfortunately, a good motivation doesn't mean a good fight sequences, and they end up feeling reminiscent of the fights in the Doctor Octopus story last episode: a way to kill time and to give the target audience what they've come here for. The latter shouldn't be a bad thing, but it feels like the fights are being used to distract from the flaws of the main plot, a notion helped by the way that both villains were defeated not through some clever thinking on Spider-Man's part, but with a sense of, "Well, we've killed enough time; let's wrap this up."

With the fights being pretty forgettable, it's a relief that the rest of the plot manages to remain competent enough. Electro tricking Spider-Man into blindly following his Spider-Tracer to a frame-up is actually a pretty good move, as is simply burning through Spider-Man's webbing and leaving Jonah's apartment when it's apparent that the police are coming, as opposed to wasting time fighting Spider-Man. If more episodes in the future can have villains who think of ways to stop Spider-Man beyond, "I can punch him!", then I'll be looking forwards to upcoming episodes a lot more in future.