Yes, it's shocking this is not a video review, I know, but I felt that since I didn't actually buy the book, but only quickly read it while in the store, it wouldn't be fair to give it a full review based on the handful of panels I actually read.

First off, if you've been reading the latest arc in this series, Spider-Man has teamed up with the X-Men against the Dark Beast, who used Doctor Curt Connors (The Lizard) to create a beam that converts normal humans into Lizard creatures. In the last issue, he had used it on most of the X-Men, except it didn't work on Emma's diamond form and Spider-Man wasn't exposed. So what we get in this issue is Emma and Spider-Man running from the X-Lizards while trying to figure out a way to change them back. In the end, Spider-Man holds off the attacking lizards while Emma frees Curt, who subsequently puts the hurt on Dark Beast. Cyclops and another X-Man watched the results unfold on television and Cyclops was pleased with the outcome.

This story made little to no sense at all. It reminded me heavily of an episode of The Spectacular Spider-Man where a similar lizard-changing gun was created and used on innocents, which helps to take the interest out of this story, since it's roughly already been done. Plus, the whole changing into a lizard part of the story of Dr. Connors isn't the interesting part about the character. We all know he's a Lizard person and doesn't like it, we all know that can happen (for decades now), the thing that usually makes the Lizard great is Spider-Man having to deal with a friend who has lost their humanity, fighting the beast he has become while trying to bring him back to the person he was. It's not the changing into a Lizard that makes that character fun to read, so doing it to a group of the X-Men isn't fun either.

Furthermore, the argument could be made that Spider-Man didn't do much of anything in this entire story arc, and that Emma could have possibly just stayed in her diamond form and fixed things anyway. It's not like Spider-Man did any one thing that helped resolve the problem on his own, so in the end, it felt very much like he was just thrown into the book for sales purposes. Obviously, having both Wolverine and Spidey on a cover or two is going to help you sell comics (as long as people don't skim it before purchasing). I am usually a fan of Chris Bachelo's art, with its interesting shapes and darker tone, but this issue specifically was much too broken up into smaller panels to enjoy any of the things he drew. If you're going to turn the X-Men into X-Lizards, than I want to see some full body shots of how they look different. At best, all we got were shoulders-up images of the lizards grabbing at Spidey and Emma.

Some of the lines Spider-Man had were good, but definitely not good enough to make up for the terrible and seemingly pointless story overall. Maybe the pointlessness of it is the entire reason we got Cyclops telling everyone at the end what the point was: "Good publicity, heroes being heroes." I'm glad I didn't waste my money on any of these issues, despite the beautiful cover work by the Dodsons. Do yourself a favor and skip the trade too.