Spider-Man made the cover of the January 17th issue of The New Yorker, but it may not have been exactly the way that Peter Parker might have wanted to make his appearance on the front of the toney pub. Barry Blitt’s cover that depicts a hospital ward filled with variously injured webslingers pokes fun at the travails of the hugely expensive Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark musical with its dazzling aerial stunts that have resulted in some well publicized accidents involving the show’s cast (see “Fall Ends Spider-Man Performance”).

 

The troubles of the Spider-Man musical are also discussed on the inside of the magazine in a section aptly titled (for its theme anyway) “Department of Rubbernecking.”   Writer Michael Schulman catalogs the various injuries sustained by members of the show’s cast, notes that “Through it all, ticket sales have soared,” and then proceeds to lay out his thesis in the form of a question—“are people paying to see calamity?”

 

Schulman, who dismisses any artistic merits of the show with a quotation from a controversial “early review” (see “Critics Savage Spider-Man Musical Prematurely”), goes on make his case for the ticket-buying power of schadenfreude with a series of quotes from audience members at a recent performance of the musical, most of whom confess at least to being excited by the “allure of a dangerous performance,” if not exactly admitting to the “morbid curiosity” ascribed to them by John Portmann, author of that jolly tome, When Bad Things Happen to Other People.