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Spider-Man musical gets new producers -- and a Peter Parker

Reeve Carney

The creative team behind Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark emerged from today's meeting with an announcement about new producers and official word on the musical's lead actor.

What they didn't reveal, however, was a specific date for the troubled Broadway musical, only saying that it will open in 2010 at the Hilton Theatre in Manhattan. The show, whose proposed budget has ballooned to $52 million, initially was set to bow in late March, but the most recent rumors had it opening past April 29 -- the cutoff for Tony Award nominations.

The creative team confirmed relative newcomer Reeve Carney, long rumored for the role, has been cast as Peter Parker/Spider-Man. The casting initially had been reported this morning in the Los Angeles Times. The 26-year-old Carney, lead singer of the rock band of the same name, also will appear in Spider-Man director Julie Taymor's big-screen adaptation of The Tempest.

In Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, Carney joins Evan Rachel Wood as Mary Jane and Alan Cumming as Green Goblin in a production scored by Bono and the Edge.

This afternoon's press release also included the announcement that Michael Cohl has replaced Chicago lawyer David Garfinkle as lead producer, with Jeremiah J. Harris becoming second producer. The full producing team is Cohl, Harris, Hello Entertainment/Garfinkle, Marvel Entertainment/David Maisel, and Sony Pictures Entertainment.

Straight for the art | Allan Sanders' superheroes

Sanders' Superheroes

Get your weekend off to the right start by checking out this collage of superheroes by illustrator and animator Allan Sanders. (via)

Future of troubled Spider-Man musical could be set today

Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark

The fate of the financially troubled Spider-Man Broadway musical could be decided today.

According to published reports, producers of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, whose budget has soared to $52 million, are meeting in Manhattan with director Julie Taymor and other members of the creative team to discuss the cash-flow problems that stalled production for nearly a month and cast doubt on the future of the production.

The musical had been set to preview in late February at a renovated Hilton Theatre, and then open sometime in March. But Patrick Healy of The New York Times writes that Taymor is expected to say rehearsals for the technically complex show won't be able to begin before January, which could push the opening past April 29 -- the cutoff date for Tony Award nominations.

Perhaps of more pressing concern is the $24 million needed to cover a proposed budget that ballooned to $52 million from an estimated $35 million, in part due to theater renovations and restorations. According to the Los Angeles Times, Spider-Man will cost about $1 million a week to produce -- "hundreds of thousands dollars more than what some elaborate shows such as Mary Poppins or West Side Story cost -- and require the 1,700-seat theater to sell out for every show for four years just to break even.

Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, which boasts a musical score by Bono and the Edge, has cast Evan Rachel Wood as Mary Jane, Alan Cumming as Green Goblin and, apparently, relative newcomer Reeve Carney as Peter Parker/Spider-Man. (Carney, who will appear in Taymor's big-screen adaptation of The Tempest, long had been rumored for the role of Spider-Man but never confirmed.)

However, as the LA Times notes, with production delays the musical risks losing the cast to other projects. Cumming, for instance, was just added to the cast of Burlesque, which begins filming next week.

NOTE: A post detailing the announcements made after the meeting can be found here.

Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes

Green Lantern Corps #41

Publishing | Buoyed by its Blackest Night miniseries and tie-in books, DC Comics claimed the first six slots on Diamond Comic Distributors' Top 300 list of books sold to the direct market in October.

It's a rare occurrence, to be sure, but just how rare? Charts-watcher John Jackson Miller contends we have to travel back more than 40 years, to a time well before the direct market, to find when DC last had the six best-selling comics (as sold to retailers). Yes, 1968. The closest DC came in the direct-market era, according to Miller, was in April 1993, when the publisher held the top five positions.

But back to October 2009, when DC also narrowed the market gap with Marvel to the closest margin in some time: The competitors were separated by just 2.43 percent in unit share, and 2.68 percent in dollar share. [Diamond Comic Distributors, The Comics Chronicles]

Retailing | Borders Group announced Thursday it will close about 200 of its Waldenbooks, Borders Express and Borders Outlet stores in January. The retail chain has been steadily closing mall-based stores in its Waldenbooks Specialty Retail division since 2001. About 130 mall stores will remain once the downsizing is complete. [Publishers Weekly]

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Magneto rounds out new Ultimate Alliance 2 content, which is available now

Magneto

Downloadable content for Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 became available in respective stores for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 today, allowing fans of the game to purchase five new playable characters and other content. Joining the previously announced Black Panther, Psylocke, Carnage and Cable is Magneto.

The download pack costs $9.99 on PS3 or 800 Microsoft points on Xbox 360. And don't forget you can now get the Juggernaut for $1.99; he was previously only available if you preordered the game from Gamestop.

This weekend, it's King Con Brooklyn

King Con Brooklyn

Here's an event that makes me wish I lived close to New York City again: King Con Brooklyn, a comics and animation convention being held Saturday and Sunday at the Brooklyn Lyceum.

It has a great name, and boasts an impressive lineup of largely local guests, including Harvey Pekar, Al Jaffee, Denny O'Neil, Neal Adams, Brian Wood, Alex Robinson, Molly Crabapple, Dave Roman, Raina Telgemeier, Kevin Colden, David Gallaher, Steve Ellis and Matt Loux.

In addition, there's a programming schedule that includes workshops, a DC Comics/Zuda portfolio review, creator spotlights, and panels devoted to kids' comics, European comics, digital comics, animation and Marvel's publishing plans.

The convention will be held from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on both days at the Brooklyn Lyceum, 227 Fourth Ave., Brooklyn.

Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes

The Book of Genesis Illustrated

Sales charts | R. Crumb's The Book of Genesis Illustrated climbs seven spots to No. 2 in its second month on BookScan's list of top-selling adult graphic novels in bookstores. It's bested, as most are, by the latest volume of Masashi Kishimoto's Naruto. But it's another story on USA Today's bestseller chart, where Crumb's book drops 49 places in its second week to No. 129. [ICv2.com, USA Today]

Passings | Tom Spurgeon, NPR's Mark Memmott and Ina Jaffe, and Michael Cieply of The New York Times have obituaries for Comic-Con co-founder Shel Dorf, who passed away on Nov. 3 at the age of 76.

Libraries | The Yoshihiro Yonezawa Memorial Library of Manga and Subculture opened over the weekend at Meiji University's Surugadai campus in Tokyo. Users can become one-day members of the library, where they can have access to about half of the 140,000 manga for about $1.10 per copy. The books can't be removed from the library. [The Japan Times]

Internet | Tom Spurgeon points out that the review blog Guttergeek will move to the expanded TCJ.com, joining a stable of hosted blogs that will include The Hooded Utilitarian. [Guttergeek]

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Wolverine: Weapon X 100 covers up for bid at eBay

by Josh Medors

Several pieces of original art from The Hero Initiative's Wolverine: Weapon X 100 Project are available for bidding on eBay ... including this one by Josh Medors, which just looks absolutely incredible. Also pieces from Chris Bachalo, Colleen Coover, Art Adams, John McCrea and several others can be found as well.

Go check'em out and place a bid; it's for a good cause.

Thin wallets, fat bookshelves: A publishing news round-up

Polly and Her Pals

• IDW announced over the weekend that it will be collecting the Sunday strips from the Cliff Sterrett classic Polly and Her Pals. The first volume, encapsulating 1925-27, will be in stores this coming August.

The strip began in 1912, but it was in the 20s that Sterrett's art really took off. Influenced by the modernist art movements, he started incorporating abstract and surrealists motifs into his Sunday pages, and many historians and critics have compared this period favorably to strips like Krazy Kat.

Kitchen Sink attempted to publish these strips back in the 90s before going under but they were only able to get two volumes out the door. Having managed to find those books in a back issue bin years ago and devoured them several times since then, let me say this is fabulous news and I'm really looking forward to seeing this release.

• IDW also posted about their intention to publish a four-issue mini-series about the Weekly World News' Bat Boy, which I imagine will be quite different from Polly and Her Pals.

• Writer Clifford Meth reports on his blog that Marvel will be publishing The Invincible Gene Colan in February 2010. The 128 page book will feature art work by the master as well as appreciations by folks like Stan Lee, Marv Wolfman and John Romita Sr.

• Apparently Erik Larsen (and his Savage Dragon) is featured in the latest edition of McSweeney's newspaper. That's kinda cool.

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Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes

Marvel

Business | Marvel Entertainment's third-quarter profits plunged 60 percent because of a steep decline in film revenue and licensing sales for the period. The publishing division declined 6 percent, or $2 million, compared to the third quarter of 2008, which the company attributes to a drop in custom publishing offset by an increase in book-market revenue. [Bloomberg, Marvel.com]

Publishing | The list of nominees for the Young Adult Library Services Association's annual Great Graphic Novels for Teens is, as usual, diverse, with titles ranging from R. Crumb's The Book of Genesis Illustrated and Jamaica Dyer's Weird Fishes to Naoki Urasawa's Pluto and Mark Millar and Tommy Lee Edwards' 1985.

The nominations, divided into categories for fiction and nonfiction, are led by Marvel with 15 titles, DC Comics and its imprints with 13, Viz Media with 12 (but for 18 volumes), Dark Horse with eight and Del Rey and Yen Press with six each.

The final selections, chosen by an 11-person committee, will be presented in mid-January at the American Library Association's Midwinter Meeting in Boston. [YALSA]

Publishing | Marvel has hired Bon Alimagno, editorial director of Harris Publications, as its editorial talent coordinator, replacing Chris Allo, who left the company in September. [Bleeding Cool]

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Put your money where your comics are (or something like that)

It's Storm, but in wallet form

Now that we've officially turned the corner on Halloween, it's time to start thinking about holiday shopping. No, don't make that face, I'm being serious.

And if you're shopping for that special comic book aficionado in your life and not sure what to get them, why not consider a wallet? More precise, a Comic Wallet. Albert Doan, of Calgary, Canada, turns old (and some new) comic books and turns them into laminated, reinforced wallet, which he then sells on his site for about $20-$30 a pop. He's even got a series of Blackest Night wallets available, if you just can't get enough DC zombies. He also handles special requests, so if you've been anxiously craving to certain sequences from say, Faust, folded up and stuffed in your back pocket, now's your chance. Myself, I'm holding out for a Little Lulu set.

What Are You Reading?

Blood's A Rover

Welcome to What Are You Reading. I hope everyone had a nice Halloween and spent at least part of it reading comics.

Our guest this week is Chip Mosher, Marketing Director at Boom! Studios, publisher of such fine books as Irredeemable and The Muppet Show. As the image above hints, Chip's been reading some rather interesting (and gritty) material, so click on the link below to discover what he and the rest of Robot 6 have been reading recently. Oh, and don't forget to let us know what you have been reading in the comments section.

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Halloween Viewing | Gambit and Rogue go to the movies

This week's episode of Marvel Super Heroes: What The--?! features not only a tribute to the greatest zombie-dancing video of all time, but also the voiceover work of Stan Lee. Enjoy!

Via

The Fifth Color - Marvel Zombies Field Guide

Marvel, with its finger oh so close to the pulse of popular culture, let an idea fester in the minds of their bullpen, slowly creating a deadly infection through the titles of the Marvel Universe.  We can trace it from an original source, the strain of the disease that would later spread, to one man:  Mark Millar.

As much as I would love to chase him down with a bunch of dudes in HazMat suits, Mark Millar is our Patient Zero in the visual juggernaut that is 'Marvel Zombies'.  Who know where he got it from, the end of a bottle of alcohol, the late night viewing of one too many George Romero movies, some internet clicks and a savvy mind for a play on the not-so affectionate terms for the True Believers, but it is here and it's here to stay.  What Millar wrought, Kirkman forged and Arthur Suydam perfected, three men taking us on a wild ride since 2005 and it shows no sign of stopping.  As long as zombies entertain the pop culture brain, someone's going to want to eat those brains.

So, in no particular order, here are some simple signs and helpful tips to the wide multi-universal world of The House of Undead Ideas.
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Black Panther leaps into Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2

Earlier today I mentioned that the first batch of downloadable content, or DLC, for Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 was due in the PS3 and Xbox 360 stores next week, and that two playable characters who would be available had yet to be revealed.

Today Marvel.com posted a video of one of those two characters -- the Black Panther:

The leader of Wakanda joins Carnage, Psylocke and Cable as a part of the DLC due Nov. 5.