Scrying Quentin Beck, Part II: Psychedelic Crisis

"Lay down all thought, surrender to the void..."

So in Part I, I wrote that Mysterio is a compelling foe because A) he's a glimpse at what Spider-Man would have become if Uncle Ben hadn't died and Peter hadn't learned that "with great power comes great responsibility"; B) he posits that putting on a costume, building web-shooters and fighting crime is, in fact, probably one of the most irresponsible ways Peter could apply his powers. Self-doubt always was Spidey's biggest foe, after all.

So now that we've nailed down Mysterio's character, let's see how his powers and abilities color the stories we read.

Be warned: things are about to get trippy.


Bad writers tend to handle Mysterio's illusions as if it were the Scarecrow's fear gas, which itself is usually handled poorly. It often amounts to stereotypical psychoactive/psychedelic visions coupled with hallucinations of zombie Uncle Ben or Gwen Stacy chastising Peter for not saving them, of all his friends and loved ones telling him he's a big ol' failure.
So. Fucking. Trite. We've all seen this a bajillion times before, probably one reason why the most recent issue of Amazing (#655 at time of writing) was kind of meh. Thank God for Marcos Martin's art, though. Good stuff.

Anyway, Mysterio's smoke and mirrors shouldn't be handled that way. It shouldn't start out as nightmarish visions - the worst trips never do (if you've never had the pleasure, I happen to be something of an authority on trips both good and bad). No, at first Mysterio's madness should be a euphoric break from reality, a literalization of the careless escape from responsibility the villain represents. It should bring Peter back to the roar of the crowds, to the TV exec handing Peter his business card and telling him he could be a star on the small screen, to the head rush of celebrity, the affirming, endorphin-pumping thrill of being on top of the world. He's amazing! He's a star!

He's accidentally destroyed midtown while trippin' balls! But let's not get ahead of ourselves. First Peter must, in his doped-up mind, relive the one moment that changed everything. No, not Uncle Ben's death. Earlier. When Peter walks backstage to the thunderous applause of a captivated audience. When he sees the security guard chasing the burglar and, in a moment of ego-fueled indifference, does nothing. Lets him get away. When he looks that guard in the eye and declares "That's your job! I'm thru being pushed around...by anyone!"

We all know what happens next.

And now we've entered the bad trip. But it's only just begun.


Lee and Ditko really did something genius in their 38-issue run together on Amazing - they crafted a unique formula that to this day remains the foundation of all Spider-Man stories. This formula consists of Spidey first encountering a villain and quickly getting the fucking shit knocked out of him, sometimes close to the point of death, only to somehow rise up and beat his foe in their next encounter. It happened with the Vulture in #2, Doc Ock in #3, the Sandman in #4, the Vulture again in #7, Electro in #9, Dock Ock again in #12, Mysterio in #13, Kraven the Hunter in #15, the list goes on and on. You have to understand that this was revolutionary at the time; a superhero never, NEVER lost their first match against a foe (well, sometimes they did, but it was never a codified occurrence like with webhead nor so humiliatingly decisive). Anyway what I'm trying to get at is that Spider-Man is the personification of fortitude, of humanity's capacity to endure beating after beating from life and come out a better person.

Mysterio fills an interesting niche, then, because the two key qualities of endurance are A) that one knows the nature of what they are enduring (an illness, an interrogation, a workout, a test, a fight, etc.) and B) that they know at some point there will be an end to it. Well, A and B are both thrown out the window on a bad trip. One's perception of time becomes completely skewed; seconds seem like hours amidst a relentless sensory assault that feels like an eternity (also, why the fuck wasn't this film nominated for anything at the Oscars? No visual effects, no cinematography, nuffin...). During the worst trips, when you forget that you've taken a drug and forget you are only tripping, when you're lost in a crossroads of drifting, nauseatingly fractured realities (remember Spice the day after Comic-Con, prooker?) you become convinced that the bad trip will never end, that from now on you'll be stuck in a never-ending nightmare. And what you see is beyond anything you could possibly comprehend or imagine sober, let alone know how to confront. Remember we're not talking about some fine arts major here, we're talking about Peter Parker: left-brained bookworm, devotee of science and math and all the very safe, monotonous, organized things that drugs blow wide open.

The Spider-Man mythos has always been explicitly anti-drug, going so far as to say "I would rather face a hundred super-villains than throw my life away on hard drugs, because it is a battle you cannot win!" This extremely eloquent page from Amazing Spider-Man - Extra! #2 sums up the crux of the situation:


In response to being offered booze, Spidey says, "I don't drink...I mean, with the spider-strength and everything, I don't think it would be responsible." Of course since that comic, writers have portrayed Peter as getting sloppy drunk at his aunt's wedding for comedic effect, but I'd like to think that the "real" Peter Parker doesn't drink for the reason above (and in light of "One More Day", anything can be rewritten out of the canon). In fact, I like to think that his powers have forced him into the misery of straightedge - perhaps why he gets such a thrill out of dressing up in a costume and fighting crime. Christ, what if a small part of him looks forward to fighting Mysterio just for the possibility of getting ensnared in his drug-addled, psychedelic gas?

Anyway, this anti-drug stuff all comes back to the Marvel Universe's foundation in social activism - it's not a world of good vs. evil like DC, but one contextualized by forces of empathy and action fighting against inaction/indifference. But that is a gargantuan post for another time. Look out for it soon.

I guess I'd like to end this all by pointing out that technically Quentin Beck is still supposedly dead in the Marvel Universe, despite the "real" Mysterio's recent reappearance in the Spidey books. This isn't a bad thing. First off, no one stays dead in comics. More importantly, it literally makes Mysterio an illusion brought to life, a hallucination that willed itself into our reality. Bad trip incarnate, IN 3-D!

If he can do that, what chance do any of us have?

"Big ones, little ones, fat ones, skinny ones/Protect me from their venomous drugs..."

Dwayne McDuffie Retrospective: All Star Superman

DWAYNE MCDUFFIE

February 20, 1962 – February 21, 2011

This week we lost a tremendous figure in comic books.  Dwayne McDuffie passed away on February 21st of complications from heart surgery.  I loved a whole lot of McDuffie's work, including his revolutionary runs on superhero TV shows Justice League and Static Shock, two Saturday Morning staples for me.  For all the attention he gets for his work in animation, and his tendency to be one of the most honest men in comics and push the boundaries for Multi-Ethnic superheroes (I mean have you seen his satirical pitch of black comic book characters in the 80's, The Teenage Negro Ninja Thrashers?  Someone call the fire department because those are some SICK BURNS) he doesn't get much attention for his great comic book writing.

So in a series of posts I'm going to go into the time warp and look through some of my favorite comics of Mr. McDuffie's.

But first let's look at his last work: his animated adaptation of Grant Morrison's beloved All Star Superman.  (If you haven't read it SPOILERS AHEAD. Also if you haven't read it yet put everything down immediately and do that right now because what is wrong with you)

I got to see All Star Superman a day before McDuffie passed away, just a day later.  He wrote the adaptation for the critically acclaimed 12 issues series.  While I didn't hate it, I did have a few problems in the movie including voice acting and some of the way that it was written.  I had my criticisms for sure, but mostly with TWO glaring mistakes. 

The first one was the prison scene in which Parasite has just been strolled into a room with Clark and Lex and all hell breaks loose.  They approached the scene a little differently in this one, with Parasite being in an actual cell ("Th...Those aren't lined with cells a-are they?" Clarks stutters), but the real problem was that Parasite pretty much starts to kill off prisoners and prison guards.  Superman just stumbles around ineffectually before actually saving Lex and a guard or two, but the damage is already done, more than just a few people have either died or sustained life threatening injuries.   

But prooker, you ask, we don't know that for sure do we?  Well no, but a second later we sure do.  As Lex and Supes start to skedaddle out of that death pit about ten prisoners start to chase after them and  just as he does in the comic book Clark uses his patented Ice Breath to stop the prisoners cold in their tracks (forgive me for that, I could not resist).  The problem lies when a monstrous Parasite proceeds to trample through them and SHATTER THEIR FROZEN BODIES.  In a comic book about Superman being the largest and brightest of humanity's heroes it just sends a wrong message to have Superman not only letting people die, which is bad enough, but KILLING THEM.  It also means that Superman cares about Lex's life than some dudes he never had an archrivalry with.  This could of well have been an err on the animation department's side, but it's a huge problem nonetheless.

That's gonna leave a mark

The second mistake comes in the climax of the fight with the sentient solar super computer Solaris.  Solaris has just blown up Superman's pet the Sun Eater from the inside and he is of course a little angry.  He fights Solaris down to earth as the ineffectual sun bounces like a toy until he stops and hits a building.    

Supes reveals that he knows that in the 853rd century Solaris will be alive and reformed, and as he lifts up his fist he says:

Pretty cool right?  That Morrison guy sure can write.

Superman takes out his frustration and sorrow over his pet's death in a way that he knows will eventually make the rogue reform; he know that Solaris will live through this.  But in the animated feature, as Solaris is on his figurative knees begging for mercy, Superman spouts, "I'm all out of mercy."  Now I understand that at the end of the day DC treats this as an action movie, and in action movies the hero always has some devastatingly stupid one liner, but this is Superman we're talking about.  He is ALL ABOUT mercy, and he does not kill (well except for that sometimes in 1939).  People always get huffy about Batman killing, but it's kind of just intuition that Superman doesn't.  Maybe Solaris ends up living, but this is totally contrary to everything All Star Superman is about and it had me cringing. 

Now this may seem like I'm getting unfairly critical on McDuffie's work on this movie, but other than those two gaffes he did a really commendable job.  He managed to fit in a whole lot of the series into such a short movie running at just over an hour long, and he gets most of the essential plot into the story as well as some fun things like the Atlas and Samson issue. 

 And then right at the end of the movie with the story wrapping up, he does something absolutely amazing: McDuffie does it better than Morrison.

As the film's last minutes start to roll, we are taken to Lex Luthor's jail cell, opening his eyes and reciting the now famous first words of All Star Superman, "Doomed Planet.  Desperate Scientists.  Kindly Couple.  Superman."  The shot pans out and we finally see Leo Quintum outside his cell who has been completely absent from the movie except for the very first scenes.  "We all know the story Luthor.  Why did you ask to see me?"  Luthor in a quiet voice tells Quintum that this is just a confession.  "Forgive me doctor, for I have sinned.  A lot." This is a huge departure from the original comics ending, where Superman had already given Quintum his DNA code and samples to reproduce a second Superman and more, a race of Supermen and women.  

I wasn't quite sure where this was going but at this point I was extremely intrigued.  

"You killed him."

"And my death bed claims that I've seen the error of my ways can't change that.  But there is one thing I can do to honor his memory."

Luthor then slides a large stack of books and notes through his prison door slit.  Quintum opens them and his eyes widen.  Luthor gives Quintum Supermans genetic code to sustain his genes, and effectively creates a world where there will always be a Superman.

The same man who committed his whole adult life to ridding the world of a Superman finally finishes the job, and what does he do?  He makes another one.  I had always thought that after seeing what Superman sees all the time (after stealing his Super Serum, and Superman using the gravity gun to speed up his genetic metabolism) that Luthor would finally get it.  He would finally understand that Superman is all caring, ever loving, always trusting.  That the most important thing in the world, in the universe, is everyone else.  Morrison has Superman punching  Luthor out in their big final fight but McDuffie just has him fall at his knees from a few words. "If you cared you would've saved the world years ago."

Wouldn't Lex Luthor having seen the way Superman's sees things have realized that he was always wrong?  After having cried while reaching a temporary transcendence?  That the only real thing that was ever in his path to greatness was himself?  And wouldn't he, even in jail facing death row really try to do anything in his power that he could to help humanity in his final hours?  Yes.  He would.

With his final work Dwayne McDuffie achieved something that no writer has ever been able to do.  He redeemed Lex Luthor.

That's the first post in this retrospective, come back soon for a look into McDuffie's short run on The Demon Etrigan and his quest to become the President of the United States.

Scrying Quentin Beck, Part I: Theatre of Cruelty

I've been thinking a lot about fishbowl-head lately.

It started out as a dumb joke where I attributed weird, random occurrences in my nerd friends' lives to THE WORK OF MYSTERIO. Stupid enough (amirite?), but it got me wondering. Okay, so I get how most of the great Spidey villains - the Doc Ocks and Venoms and Lizards, et al. - riff off of various aspects of Spider-Man and the larger things he metonymically represents. Something that's always bugged me is that I could never make that connection between webhead and Mysterio. How does he contextualize our hero? What dynamic are the two caught in, playing off of each other with?

Then I remembered what made me start looking at superhero comics as "legitimate" literature and art in the first place - the Mindless Ones, the first in what would become a long list of academic comics blogs I started reading instead of taking notes in AP US History. Back in '08, the Mindless Ones started posting in-depth analyses of Spider-Man's villains (their reviews of the Spider-Slayers and the Vulture are absolutely breathtaking, completely changed my entire understanding of the Spider-Man mythos. The Green Goblin post is also excellent, although I prefer this one from another great comics blog. I disagree with a lot of their take on Kraven the Hunter, but it's still an enlightening read.) Every time they finished a review, they promised their next one would be Mysterio. Since I never really got the guy, I looked forward to what they had to say about him. I mean, I knew he was a big deal - he was the final boss of Mysterio's Menance for Christ's sake, that's a big fucking deal when you've just turned nine. But I could never quite make sense of him, how he fit in to the larger fabric of the Spider-Man story. I knew the Mindless Ones did, but after their Vulture post, they stopped the Spiderogues Reviews completely. That was circa Thanksgiving 2008.

But now our dear prooker has begun a comics blog and invited me to write on it. So here we are. Just me, you, and a comic book supervillain.

Let's make sense of all this, shall we?


There are two things that define our crystal ball-helmeted foe. Obviously one is the whole master of illusions shtick, the smoke and mirrors, hallucinatory gas, hypnotism, psychedelic special effects, etc. etc. That stuff's all very interesting, and it'll be the focus of Part II, but for now I want to focus on a more subtle aspect of Quentin Beck's character that, I think, is essential to understanding what makes him a great Spider-Man foe: the Performer.

We're first introduced to Mysterio in Amazing Spider-Man #13, where he is established as a jack-of-all trades in Hollywood, a true auteur - special effects wiz, stage magician, stuntman, actor, the whole nine yards. His motivation to move to New York City and become a supervillain? Spider-Man's getting all the headlines and stealing his spotlight. It's that simple. That spectacularly vain. Mysterio dons a costume for fame and wealth; he's Spider-Man before he was Spider-Man, when he was going up against Crusher Hogan for $100 and becoming a TV celebrity in Amazing Fantasy #15. Mysterio is what Spidey would have become if Uncle Ben hadn't taken that bullet and, like in Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty, violently shattered the false reality that had gone to Peter's head.

But things get even juicier. Mysterio is not just a dark mirror to webhead, but his very existence undermines the moral code Spider-Man has built his life around. When Quentin Beck dons his costume and commits crimes, he does so with a sense of theatricality none of the other Spidey villains possess. For him, it's all a performance; he's all about the spectacle, the thrill, the rush - the fantastical escape from the real world. Like a drug, appropriately enough. Mysterio should be very consciously theatrical and spectacular in his machinations, as if he was constantly wrapped up in the performance of his life.


RELEVANT DIGRESSION. When I was in middle school, I had a bit part in a play at the Folger Shakespeare Library in DC (yes, the same Folger that makes those Shakespeare books they force you to read in high school. Sorry guys). Being an angsty, histrionic tween, I had a lot of miserable shit going on my life. Every day I would look forward to the show because for a few hours I could completely abandon my life. I could escape, become enveloped in another world and leave all the crap and troubles forgotten at the door.

That's Mysterio right there, and I imagine that same feeling is also one of the things that drives Peter to keep donning his costume and fight crime, at least unconsciously. The Spider-Man mythos is so heavily predicated on Peter's personal life being totally messed up, of course he sees his "great responsibility" as an escape, even when it only leads to more trouble for him (again, much like a drug addiction). Why else would he be so wisecracking and jovial as Spider-Man? Swinging through the air in between skyscrapers, playing a hero, beating up two-bit thugs - it's every bullied adolescent's fantasy realized; once he puts on that mask he can become totally, euphorically free in a way most could only dream of.

What makes Mysterio so great is that he causes us to realize that this idea of escape, even if it is toward a positive goal, can potentially be an incredibly irresponsible way to deal with one's life. Peter interprets his mantra "With great power comes great responsibility" as heroic self-sacrifice, that he must neglect himself for a greater good. But you can't just ignore the bad things going on in your life, you have to actually deal with them authoritatively - anything short of that is greatly irresponsible and, in fact, very dangerous. Not just to yourself either, but to everyone around you, everyone who has or will interact with you. Mysterio, with both his bombastic theatricality and his hallucinogen gases, has taken this idea of immersion into a consequence/baggage-free persona to its most inevitably self-destructive degree, something Spidey must constantly reevaluate his entire life to watch out for.

Well that's all I have to say for now. Tune in for the next installment, where I'll take a look at how Mysterio's trademark abilities play into all of this, in Scrying Quentin Beck, Part II: Psychedelic Crisis.

It's the technical term for bad trip, OKAY? JEEZ!!

Time Travel Tuesday: World's Finest #175

Welcome, dear readers - all two of you - to Time Travel Tuesday! This brilliant idea, originally concocted by our very own prooker, has us review obscure comics from waaaay back. Today, I've got my sights on World's Finest #175, "The Superman-Batman Revenge Squads," from May 1968. Let's take a look!

I came across this ersatz tale in a bin of retro comics a few weeks ago. The connection was instant - as soon as I saw that spectacular Neal Adams cover, with those Batman Revenge Squad costumes, I was sold. Seriously, why hasn't anyone (Grant Morrison) brought these guys back? Am I the only one who thinks those costumes are beyond fuggin' amazing?!

Seriously, take a good look at those supervillainous duds. Not only are they incredibly pleasing on an aesthetic level, they are also brilliant inversions of the Batsuit, by far the most intimate, recognizable and, indeed, essential extension of Batman's crime-fighting brand. The shadowy grays and blacks Batman wears to conceal his identity as a privileged billionaire are changed to a brazen, decidedly aristocratic purple, the color of royalty. The Bat-symbol, the semiotic distillation of Batman's essence, the iconic image on which his entire brand is based (itself the stylized outline of a bat, the appropriation of a frightening harbinger into a heroic beacon) is transformed into a winged skull, a gliding personification of death. His gloves, full of diverse hidden gadgets like Bat-tasers and launching fin blades, become purely physical gauntlets - the reduction of Batman's comprehensive mastery-of-all-trades into one savage, brute fist (one reason why Bane remains such a compelling Batman foe).


The individuals behind the suits are certainly an interesting bunch, ones that you immediately want to see in action as soon as they're introduced. I'm still floored by the fact that, in this Nostalgic Age of Comics, no one has dug this Batman Revenge Squad concept back up. The closest thing I can think of are Morrison's Three Ghosts of Batman.

These anti-Batmen are absolutely rife with storytelling potential. Imagine if they were recast as Batman-wannabees, resentful of the Dark Knight's paragon status. Why should this one man be the sole exemplar of peak human perfection, the sole realization of human potential? What about the rest of us? So, after years of training - perhaps during the period of illogical comic book time where Batman raises a shit-ton of Robins and Batgirls - these men train and train and train. They become just as skilled, just as determined, just as knowledgeable, just as obsessed, just as wealthy (maybe? While his fortune affords him the bat-gadgets and brand iconography, we all know even without it Bruce Wayne would have become Batman) as our hero. But while the underlying motivation of "Batman" is undeniably positive, that of the Revenge Squad is narcissistic, self-consciously neurotic and destructive, so although they may give the Caped Crusader quite a run for his money, they will inevitably fail. I think that's a story worth being told...BUT ENOUGH FANWANKERY.

The story, scripted by Leo Dorfman, is pretty forgettable...which is probably why it was forgotten. '68 was a weird period in the development of superhero comics; the industry was starting to eschew the zany, campy, waaay out-there sci-fi trappings that defined the Silver Age, but had not yet reached the more "grounded maturity" of the Bronze Age.

World's Finest #175 occurs during a friendly annual competition between Superman and Batman. The Superman Revenge Squad - a group of minor recurring Superman foes during the Silver Age - teams up with the newly-formed Batman Revenge Squad to sabotage the games and defeat their enemies. Robin and Jimmy Olsen catch on to the Squads' behind-the-scenes meddling and tip off the heroes, who break into the villains' lair and apprehend them with little fuss. Not exactly Melville. Not even on par with other comics of the time - Lee and Kirby had given Captain America his solo series just one month earlier, for instance.

And yet - damn those costumes! - I simply can't condemn ol' 175 to the trash heap. LOOK WHAT YOU'VE DONE NEAL ADAMS!!!!!!!

Spider-Man's Tangled Web...The Musical!

Beware, this be a long one.

So I went to see Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark the other day. Waited an hour in 17-degree weather to get $30 tickets. Now every time I look in the mirror I ask myself whether it was worth it. Oh who am I kidding, of course it was, but in the same way that I thought Avatar in 3-D IMAX was worth shelling out $15 to see – I’m glad I involved myself in a pop-culture phenomenon that everyone is talking about.

I knew that Turn Off the Dark was going to be bad going in to it – I mean, really, how could it possibly not be? – but I expected it to be bad in the best, most enjoyable way, the way where bad is just as valid as good. I sauntered into the Foxwoods Theatre (someone should tell them that the –re ending is supposed to be used for the art form, not the venue) assuming the experience would be akin to reading a Silver Age comic: inanely stupid, yes, but so full of wonder and excitement and spectacle and out-there imagination and WHOA LOOK AT THOSE STUNTS and HOLY SHIT IT’S SPIDEY ON BROADWAY that I would be floored, overwhelmed with some kind of weird, cathartic ectoplasm of amazing childhood giddy-glee.

Good God was I disappointed, because this show was just bad. Not so bad it’s good. Not bad but entertaining. Not bad but that’s okay because BIFF! POW! it’s Spider-Man on Broadway.

Just bad.

As both a Spider-Man fan and a drama major studying in Manhattan, it’s very hard for me to look at this production objectively; there is so much in both departments that is horribly wrong. But seeing as A) this is a comics blog and B) the whole drama angle is kind of an important thing

to get right in a Broadway show anyway, I’m going to throw any pretentions of objectivity out the window right now. THERE. IT HAS BEEN DONE.

I suppose that the biggest problem with the show is that its

biggest draw, the spectacle (or is it really the suspense, the possibility of witnessing an accident occur?), is far from spectacular. It’s Cirque du Soleil-lite, to be frank. With the exception of three amazing sequences – the telling of Arachne’s origin at the show’s beginning, the scene where Spidey’s powers first manifest, and the well-orchestrated Act I finale – the stunts and aerial acrobatics are beyond underwhelming. The novelty of it all wears off fast; by a quarter-way through the first act my nerdy enthusiasm and excitement had turned into indifferent, slightly bored bemusement. The saddest thing is that so many opportunities for amazing visuals went unrealized – there is a long scene where reporters at the Daily Bugle describe an epic offstage fight going on between Spider-Man and the Green Goblin. Wouldn’t it be interesting to actually see that fight in mid-air before our eyes instead of having to wade through a sea of exposition? I thought that was kind of the point of the show…or at least its $65 million price tag.

The story itself is a complete mess. The narrative is framed by a Geek Chorus (HUR DUR GET IT?) trying to craft the ultimate Spidey fan-fiction. It’s a concept rife with metafictional possibilities that are more-or-less left completely untouched. The quartet (Gideon Glick, Jonathan Schwartz, Mat Devine, and Alice Lee) doesn’t even function as a classical Greek Chorus – their constant freezing of time and fanboy interjections only detract from the story. The thing is – as anyone who has been accosted by one in a comic book store knows all too well – true fanboys (note the difference from fans) are a goddamn insufferable, obnoxious bunch, the ultra-annoying bottom-feeders of geekery. If we can’t stand them talking in real life, how are we supposed to in the theatre?

They also suck at writing fan-fiction: the entire first act is ripped, sometimes word-for-word, straight from the first Spider-Man film. Knowing exactly what will happen down to the scene causes the musical, an experience predicated on a spirit of innovative newness, to become extremely tedious. Act I is a predictable chore to get through, not relieved in the least by Bono and the Edge’s at best forgettable soundtrack.

There are a number of weird, small deviations from the first film’s plot – Doctor Octopus’s sympathetic origin from Spider-Man 2 is grafted onto Norman Osborn’s in a strange attempt to make him a tragic villain, for example (there’s no Harry in the musical, which is off-putting). The gesture is a hackneyed attempt at complexity and undermines what the Green Goblin is supposed to embody in the first place; Osborn’s story is, at it’s core, that of a bad man who becomes worse, a man who misunderstands the nature of responsibility and, in doing so, inevitably abandons it entirely.

That sort of thing is the real problem with the Spider-Man musical: it couldn’t care less about Spider-Man or his mythos. Spidey, both in terms of the individual character and the larger essence of his story, is an afterthought in the show. Librettist/director Julie Taymor (best-known for the Tony Award-winning adaptation The Lion King as well as the Academy Award-nominated Across the Universe and Frida) and composers Bono and the Edge display a complete lack of understanding – or passing interest – in what Spider-Man is actually about. In trying to justify the nonsensical title, Taymor stated, “The one thing that Spider-Man is about is trying to bring a certain kind of light back into a world that is full of darkness.”

I mean, I guess, but Christ isn’t that what every damn superhero is about? How is that unique to Spider-Man? Is that even what the Spider-Man mythos is supposed to represent?

It’s quite clear that no one involved in the creation of this musical consulted the Spider-Man comics, or have ever even actually read one in the first place – perhaps why everything in the musical is taken either from the film franchise or classical mythology. The only character Taymor seems to have any interest in is Arachne, the expert weaver-turned-first spider of Greek myth. It is more her story than Spider-Man’s – I think Arachne actually spends more time on stage than he does – and their mystical connection feels uncomfortably forced.

The desire to connect comic books, historically associated with juvenility, with the academic/artistic legitimacy of mythology is an understandable one: superheroes are the mythology of the United States, after all. But as true as this statement is, it’s also a compromisingly obvious, greatly limited understanding of the comic book superhero’s true potential as art and literature.

The second act, which adapts the “Spider-Man No More” plot that heavily influenced Spider-Man 2, is more freed from the strict plotline constraints of the first. Too bad that it makes absolutely no sense. This is the point where Arachne really enters the picture, and accommodating such an out-of-place character’s connection to our protagonist takes a strenuous toll on the story’s coherence. It’s also where the “turn off the dark” in the title, a phrase from a story Bono recalled of a young child trying to tell his mother to turn the lights on, is forced into the storyline. The two unravel what little structure and sense the narrative had left, and the resulting plot is all very un-Spider-Man. But at least the Geek Chorus stops budding in after a while – I assume they can’t make sense of what’s going on either.

Although the acrobatic fight choreography and aerial stunts are mostly duds (or at least egregiously overhyped), everything you’ve heard about how the set design is brilliant is right on the money. Taymor’s mind-blowing pop-up rendering of Spidey’s environment is nothing short of masterful. The first act’s engrossing settings are a cross between German expressionism, 60s pop art, and Fellini surrealism, where perspectives and perceptions are constantly, dramatically altered at a moment’s notice (in one scene, Spider-Man and the Green Goblin fight at the top of the Chrysler Building, which jets out into the audience as the stage’s back wall becomes the vibrant Manhattan streets stories below). I can’t do it justice in words alone, it’s truly something that has to be experienced firsthand.

The second act’s set consists mainly of giant, column-like LED screens in the background, which project multimedia visuals throughout the act. It has a few cool tricks up its sleeve, but overall it’s a disappointing follow-up to the ornate pop-up cityscape that drew us into the previous act.

The costume design is pure Julie Taymor – lots of exaggerated Noh gestures under big, blocky, papier-mâché-y costumes and stylized masks. Taymor is aiming for a comic book aesthetic, but the result is wildly at odds with anything related to Spider-Man or any recognizable superhero comic. The Green Goblin looks like a mutant drag queen, while the Sinister Six and the petty gangsters of New York City appear to be life-size Lego people.

The cast is hit-or-miss. Reeve Carney is serviceable as Peter Parker, it’s a pity his fantastic voice is wasted on such poorly-written music. Also he wears this abso-fuckin’-lutely ballin’ Spidey jacket towards the end of the show. I WANT IT! Jennifer Damiano is a forgettable Mary Jane Watson, though her Girl Friday-meets-Damsel in Distress role doesn’t exactly give Damiano much to work with. Patrick Page, one of the show’s delights, takes Norman Osborn/the Green Goblin into wildly inventive territory; he interprets Osborn, recast as an environmentalist genetics researcher, as a mad Ted Turner, instilling the character with Kramer-esque eccentricities and a wonderfully over-the-top Southern drawl. The play’s best moments occur when Page breaks from the (ostensibly) tragic villain schtick and taps into the unrestrained, viciously sardonic glee the Green Goblin is meant to have. TV Carpio also shines as Arachne, the most complex character in the musical. It’s clear Taymor put great effort into crafting Spider-Man’s supernatural patron, perhaps even basing the Godlike artist on herself. Carpio instills the character with intrigue and a mythic majesty, while her powerful, riffing voice makes something interesting out of even the worst of Bono and the Edge’s half-baked musical collaborations. Of course her character still doesn’t make any damn sense, but whatever.

The biggest disappointment in the cast is Michael Mulheren as J. Jonah Jameson, who spends the entire musical looking and acting like he has something better to do than try to salvage this national joke of a show. The musical's drunken momentum dies as soon as a line comes out of his mouth. To Mulheren’s defense, Taymor does next to nothing with the rich character; he doesn’t even get to be part of a song. I was hoping he would at least have a sweet riff on getting pictures of Julia Roberts in a thong (which, 9 years later, is kind of a nasty prospect).

Also Bono inserted "Vertigo" into a party scene. Shameless self-promotion, much? JEEZ!

And for all the hype about Swiss Miss, the new villain created for the musical, she barely even appears. I have no idea why they bothered creating her in the first place.

Finally (THANK GOD), I was disappointed that no one fell. Let’s be real, that’s the main reason people are coming. I was hoping Reeve Carney would land in my lap so I could snag his Spidey mask. The only technical difficulty was at the very end of the show! WHAT A RIP-OFF, AMIRITE?!

TL;DR I'm going to write a better Spider-Man musical. I got the libretto down, gonna need a composer for the music and lyrics though. Preferably someone who has made a decent song in the last twenty years.
God this is a sloppy post. I need an editor. SO MANY DIGRESSIONS