By all accounts, Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, the $60 million Spider-Man musical that recently announced it would open three weeks later than planned and yet seems even farther from ready than that, is a troubled production.

As the New York Times recently smacked it down, simply listing facts, “The two-dozen flying sequences are being worked out and still require safety approval from the state Department of Labor. The music, marking the Broadway debut of the U2 frontmen, still isn’t synchronized with special effects, plot and dialogue. Scene-to-scene transitions, essential for rhythm and safety, aren’t complete. Two actors have been injured hurtling through acrobatic rehearsal sequences.”

But hey, there are some first-look photos of the musical in Vogue now, with Mary Jane wearing “gowns by Alexander McQueen, Marchesa or Dior Haute Couture.” As we all know, Vogue magazine and expensive designer gowns are guaranteed magnets for geek males, so it sounds like the Spider-Man musical is going to do just A-OK after all.

>>>More photos at Styleite.

These comic book characters are more interesting than your regular action heroes. It would be very hard now to go back to Bruce Willis as John McClane in Die Hard unless he was popping claws like Wolverine or started climbing up the wall like Spider-Man.

- Mark Millar on the power that realistic special effects have given (his?) super hero movies.

For the record we think that John McClane would kick Spider-Man’s pansy ass and that he and Wolverine would probably get along disturbingly well.

When the Marvel/Disney merger was made official, a lot of people immediately plundered the wide ranging crossover potential, from Spider-Man in Kingdom Hearts to a Beast buddy movie.

Today we see the first shamelessly tied in fruit of that union, in the form of a series of variant covers for Marvel’s November titles, where ten of Marvel’s biggest characters get reinterpreted Tron-style.

The Lizard, a.k.a. Dr. Curt Connors, the war vet and researcher who spliced his own DNA with reptilian DNA to regenerate an arm lost on the battlefield, has been confirmed as the villain in the next Spider-Man movie, according to The Wrap. This would be cooler if anyone much cared about the next Spider-Man movie.

Cool Dudes Talk About H.P. Lovecraft (Comic Book Resources)

They’re Making a Petz MMO?! (Massively)

This is What Happens When You Go Out To Eat With Jim Lee (Twitpic)

The Marvel Universe Goes Speed Dating (Comics Alliance)

Emma Stone is Mary Jane? (Bleeding Cool)

Fractal Cupcakes, Mmmmm (Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories)

Who is the Swedish Chef’s Wife? (ToughPigs)

(pic is P. Craig Russel‘s alternate cover to Action Comics #894 (you know, the one with Death), via Paul Cornell, click to embiggen.)

Yesterday morning ABC News filled some of their airtime by interviewing the creators and stars of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, otherwise known as the yes-it’s-totally-happening Spider-Man Broadway musical. The show is being directed by Julie Taymor, with music and lyrics by Bono and The Edge, and is apparently the most expensive Broadway musical of all time. Opening night is December 21st.

The highlight of the whole thing was a performance of one of the songs from the show, Boy Falls From the Sky by the house band and Reeve Carney. Yes, there is video after the jump.

Comic Critics: McBatman delights our little fan hearts.  (This is only half of it.  Read the rest here.)

Also: Context.

Just when you think there couldn’t possibly be another clip from the 1960′s Spider-Man show where J. J. Jameson makes a face, says something completely ridiculous, pounds his desk and/or yells for his secretary, this video just keeps going. For ten minutes.

Researchers at Stanford University have created a material similar to rubber which replicates the method geckos use to climb.

The Stanford scientists have already successfully tested the material on a robot they adorably named Stickybot and are now working on a way to reinforce the material’s strength to support human weight.

As of August 26th, 2010, anyone who visited Acclaim’s website was greeted with a fairly solemn message stating all of their games will no longer be in service.