After another round of scathing reviews in which critics from the New York Times and the Washington Post called it “one of the worst musicals in history,” ticket sales for the still-as-yet-unfinished Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark were up by 3%. The new musical, which is still in its tryout phase, grossed $1.33 million during the past week, making it the second-highest grossing show on Broadway, just behind Wicked.

From the beginning the Spider-Man musical has been plagued by both financial problems and a series of unfortunate accidents (see “Fall Ends Spider-Man Performance”). The list of injured performers is long enough that it occasioned a funny sketch on Saturday Night Live (see above).

In spite of the bad reviews, which have occasioned more than a few articles entitled “Spider-Man: Turns Off the Critics,” the show has already had 68 “preview” performances, which means it has lasted longer in previews than many shows that opened conventionally. Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark officially opens March 15th, but with such a large number of lucrative preview performances, critics couldn’t wait for the oft-postponed opening to occur before unloading on the show. After a first round of premature reviews in Newsday and Bloomberg News in December (see “Critics Savage Spider-Man Musical Prematurely”), a second larger wave of highly critical reviews from major publications including the New York papers (the Times, Post, & Daily News) along with the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, and the Hollywood trades hit during the first week in February—but the result of all that bad ink was an uptick in sales.