WonderCon 2012: Spider-Man dominates Marvel panels

Even with major announcements today for Captain Marvel and the X-Men, it's Spider-Man who has had more of an impact on WonderCon this year than seemingly any other single character at Marvel. Given that Marvel Studios isn't handling the upcoming Amazing Spider-Man movie, that may be somewhat surprising to some--but really it's likely more an indication that even with The Avengers coming up on the horizon, there's no single character at Marvel that commands the kind of brand recognition that Spider-Man does. He's right up there with Batman and Superman in terms of mainstream awareness. Just like the Amazing Spider-Man feature film, the upcoming "No Going Back" arc of The Amazing Spider-Man comics will see Spider-Man facing off against The Lizard--but unlike the film, which seems to feature Dr. Curt Connors quite a bit, this story revolves around a version of The Lizard who has finally overcome the influence of Connors completely. After mudering Connors' child, the doctor's personality retreats out of the mind he shares with The Lizard, allowing the monster to completely run the show--and testing Spider-Man's resolve that he won't kill his foes. "The Lizard is a vile, despicable creature that killed a child—someone Spidey cared about," writer Dan Slott told Marvel's website. "This is a monster that should not be allowed to run free. This needs to be dealt with. And maybe, just maybe, despite Peter Parker's personal vow that 'No One Dies,' maybe this is a creature that needs to be put down." The story will begin in June, following on the heels of the currently-ongoing "Ends of the Earth" story featuring the Sinister Six, and will pair up Slott's scripts with art by Giuseppe Camuncoli and variant covers by J. Scott Campbell, Shane Davis, Matt Clark and Adam Kubert. It is apparently part of a larger plan on Slott's part to reinvent both The Lizard, and Morbius the Living Vampire, another character who will appear in the next six months of the series. "As we've seen in this year's Point One issue, Morbius has been working on that serum as a way to turn himself back into a human being," says Slott. "We know that he'd like to use The Lizard as a test subject. Morbius thinks if he can use this to change The Lizard back into Curt Connors, maybe he'll have enough data to find his own cure." He also tells readers what was pretty obvious from the get-go when Marvel first showed off the cover to Amazing Spider-Man #688 (shown above) last night: "But more than any story we've told during the Big Time run, this is the darkest one," the writer says. "Amazing Spider-Man is a T/T+ rated book. And we're gonna see how far we can push that."