Now that I’ve seen it, I’ve been trying to figure out something to say about Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. I’ve been going back and forth since I saw it Thursday night and I couldn’t really come up with something.

And then around lunch time on Friday, I had an exchange with Eden about the infamous shoe song. For those who don’t know, there is a song in the second act about shoes. Eden was having a hard time getting her head around the notion that the show, about a superhero, has a song about shoes. She was wondering what the context was. The song comes in the second act when Arachne, the character from Greek Myth and the villain, of sorts, becomes angry that the Daily Bugle doesn’t cover her robbery of 40 (or is it 50?) shoe stores. This prompts Arachne and her spider cohorts (think multilegged babes wearing helmets that are similar to those worn by the Jack Kirby’s New Gods) to sing about the joys of shoes. The idea that anyone would have thought this song belonged in a play such as this kind of explains how wrong things can go when people who don’t understand comics try to use the characters and archetypes to make a buck when they don’t understand what they are dealing with.

The play proper begins, after a riff on the death of Gwen Stacy, when four kids (the Geek Chorus) decide to rethink Spider-Man to make him more like today. During the discussion the myth of Arachne is brought up. She was a beautiful woman who offended the gods by being the best weaver ever, She beat one of the gods in a weaving duel but ended up committing suicide before being turned into a spider.

The myth allows for the most beautiful sequence in the play, but at the same time it’s staged in such away that it seems to be imported from another show (like from anything else Julie Taymor has directed).

The inclusion of the myth itself is the first thing wrong with the show. Taymor, who I’m sure brought it into the play, is relying way too much on the notion that comics are the modern-day myths. Yes the Marvel comic universe is full of mythic characters (Thor, Hercules), but at the same time they just weren’t brought in randomly and there was ground work laid for it. The people who did it — Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Steve Ditko and others — knew that we wouldn’t accept it just because they said so. Taymor doesn’t understand that. Instead, she simply throws Arachne in to the mix and then pushes her aside for most of the first half of the play.

After the Arachne bit, we get Peter Parker and his relationship with Mary Jane.

There is a duet where both Peter and MJ go home (run-down houses in Queens) and sing of their troubles. MJ fights with her dad and Peter fights with Aunt May and Uncle Ben. This is the first real indication that the creative team doesn’t know their source material.

They changed the characters. Peter and the relationship with his aunt and uncle is strained, but ridiculously so. There is no sense of love between them.The play marginalizes them so Ben has almost no presence other than to die and Aunt May becomes a witty sarcastic cypher. I was watching that early scene and I had no sense of them. How could Peter have turned out as well as he did if they all behaved like that? Worse when Uncle Ben dies (killed not by gun shot by a crook Peter should have stopped, but by a car thief stealing a friend;s car) you can’t understand why it affects him so.

We then meet Norman Osborne and his wife who are doing genetic manipulation for the military. When Peter and his class arrive at the lab he’s bitten. The next day he beats up his tormentors for the hell of it and then goes into a wrestling ring to get enough money to buy a car to impress MJ. What?

Eventually he becomes Spider-Man, and it’s at this point the really cool flying happens over the audience.

Norman Osborne becomes the Green Goblin and suddenly (and I do mean suddenly) he has kidnapped Spidey, stolen a piano and taken them to the top of the Chrysler Building (There is a huge plot hole here that is explained away by a few howlingly awful lines of dialogue). There he asks Peter to join him in taking over the world. Of course Peter refuses and they fight over and in the audience (it’s really cool). However the Goblin has a failsafe and he pushes MJ — whom he also has kidnapped — off the Chrysler Building while tied to the piano. But Peter tells the Goblin he’s really tied to the piano and it pulls the Goblin to his doom, while Peter saves MJ.

That’s the end of Act 1, so you’re probably wondering what’s left for Act 2.

In Act 2, they threw out everything but the Greek myth and in the process, burn down the main character that has survived and thrived for half a century. In a play called Spider-Man, they pretty much don’t have him appear.

The plot of the second act has Spidey giving up his superhero life for MJ (somehow he loses his powers, though why or how that happens is never explained). Arachne and her minions banish the Geek Chorus and they bring a reign of chaos led by the Sinister Six — Kraven, Electro, Swiss Miss (a new character created for the show that looks like Grace Jones in shiny armor), The Swarm, Carnage and the Lizard. They also resurrect the Goblin, who appears on TV screens even though there is a citywide blackout.

Arachne wants Peter to love her. But since he loves MJ, he refuses to leave her and doesn’t become Spider-Man for almost all of Act 2. This means lots of meaningless chatter and songs as Peter proves he’s as emo as they come. It all comes to a head when the Sinister Seven kidnaps Mary Jane and takes her to the Brooklyn Bridge. She falls seeming her to her death and Peter overcome with grief leaps to his death.

He doesn’t die since Arachne saves him from death, but doesn’t anyone have a problem with Peter Parker killing himself for a girl?
At what point in the 50-year history of the character would he have done this?

Taymor and her cohorts obviously don’t understand the way comics function. As much as they are touted as myth, they don’t behave like them. They behave according to their own rules which are not the same. For example the end of the play — where Arachne gives Peter back MJ and his life because he offers to stay with her comes off as extremely silly.

What were they thinking? This angsty nonsense is not Spider-Man.

This being a comics blog, I’m not going to go into all of the technical problems with the show. You don’t need to know that the music by Bono and The Edge has only one song that works in context, that the dancing is among the worst I’ve seen and that the performances, with one exception, range from wasted to awful (Reeve Carney as Peter Parker has no business being on the stage)

It’s spectacular during the flying sequences and if they rewrote the first act and cut off the second act they might have something. But I doubt that is going to happen.

Ultimately, it’s a waste of time and money.

It’s probably the worst comic adaptation ever. Not because its bad (the first act could work and I have seen much worse) but rather because it’s asking the public to pony up and pay as much as $145 a seat (not including premium seats) to watch a bunch of way-too-clever intellectuals over-think a simple iconic story to such a degree that it no longer resembles what they started with. This play is an affront to comic lovers everywhere.

Do yourself a favor and forget it ever existed.

I am pretty pro-Girl Comics, at least at this point. The concept sounds wonderful on paper (er, screen, but you know what I mean) — there’s a great line-up of talent that covers quite a broad range, and I like the idea of having women do everything from the art to writing to lettering and more. I think that’s really cool.

But considering Marvel’s problematic attempts to appeal to women recently (the entire Marvel Divas debacle, the bad inside art of Pride & Prejudice, the whole lip gloss thing), I’m guessing this will probably be similar. Yes, giving Heidi MacDonald an exclusive interview with the editor is a good first step, but I don’t think this is going to get women who aren’t already reading comics to do so.

At the most, I think it’s just going to get indie readers to pick up this Marvel title. And I’m OK with that. I like superhero comics. In theory. I’m not speaking for all women here, but personally, the art of a lot of superhero comics turns me off. I just don’t connect with it. (I had a dream the other night that Colleen Coover was drawing Blackest Night for DC and when I woke up, I thought how awesome that would be. That would probably get me to read the book.) So I like when indie creators do superheroes. It’s fun. So I’m looking forward to that on this level.

I read a lot of disappointing-but-expected objections to this, like “why can’t we just tell stories for people” which usually means “I don’t really want to read books by women.” Because I mean, I like stories for people, regardless of who writes/draws them, and men absolutely can tell wonderful stories about women (I loved loved loved Dong Hwa Kim’s Color trilogy, which I will review eventually). But when there are pretty good lists of “entry” comics that don’t have one title by a female creator, I think there’s a problem. It’s not that women aren’t making comics — they are, and they are making good ones — I think they’re often ignored.

So I think Girl Comics is at least pointing out that hey, women are making comics.

I don’t know if there’s really an answer to “how to get women to read more comics.” I don’t know if there needs to be, personally. I think women are already reading comics, just not what Marvel and DC typically consider to be comics. But maybe this is a step in the right direction. Or a step toward something. I guess we’ll see how successful it is.

Adweek probably had one of the more interesting dissections (Note to Adweek: Lame headline. It’s going to bring changes? Really? Yes, I know sometimes you just have to write a headline, but come on.)

Everyone’s talked up the “Disney wants to bring in the boys!” point, which makes sense, sure. The Adweek piece mentions that Marvel wants to bring in the ladies:

Still, Disney is expert at attracting young women to titles they may not normally be interested in (see, Johnny Depp making the ultimate young-boy fantasy, a pirate-adventure, popular with girls). For all the talk about Marvel continuing to run independently, don’t be surprised if the studio accesses Disney’s stable of talent to make some pics more girl-friendly.

If that ends up being true, that sounds pretty awesome to me.

The hopeful part of me would like to think having Disney be in control of things like marketing and branding (two things that the company is very, very good at) will allow Marvel to just make comics and develop properties. It’s probably too much to ask that it will usher in some new era of creativity, but I guess we’ll see.

But In any case to me, after the initial “Wow! That’s huge!” thing wore off, I don’t really think it’s going to change too much for either company. It doesn’t feel like a good thing or a bad thing.

Paul Gitter, who is the president of consumer products, North America, for Marvel Entertainment Inc., says when doing such things, they have to be “very careful” not to “alienate our core” audience — in other words, boys don’t want a bunch of girls wearing T-shirts with Spider-man on them. Or something.

Vice president of product merchandising at Marvel, Susan Fields, also says “Hulk was a big component for us when it came to being eco-friendly, with T-shirts featuring the character and sayings like ‘go green.’ ” I wish I could make this stuff up.

But overall, I’m really pretty OK with this. I’ve often wished that comic book T-shirts came in girly styles (I am not someone who wears an XXL) and maybe in earlier days, some Marvel lip gloss would’ve been a fun purchase for me.

Still, with Marvel’s other attempts at reaching out to young women (including the recent adaptation of Pride and Prejudice) makes me believe they don’t really know what they’re doing (but since these are licensing deals, the actual product development will probably be in the hands of people who have experience making products for women).

I don’t think this will get women reading comics, though, and I don’t think that’s really the point. After all, plenty of women connect with the character of Wonder Woman but have no interest in picking up comics about her. This is just about taking the cool iconography of comics and selling it to people. But I’m also OK with that.

Image of Marvel lip glosses, taken from WWD.com