In fairness to the Spider-Man show on Broadway, I link to a review by Scott Brown in New York magazine. This is about the best notice I've seen from a major publication and even it isn't the kind of thing producers will rush to quote in ads.
A recurring theme in just about all the reviews is that the show suffers from a general disrespect for the source material; that the creators of the stage version weren't content to do the Spider-Man from decades of comic books. They had to reinvent the property, doing their vision of the character…as opposed to, say, the one concocted by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. Again, I haven't seen the show but what the critics are all charging is a problem that frequently crops up when a comic book is adapted into another medium, especially a live-action one. Some adapter rethinks (and too often, over-rethinks) the concept. It's kind of like, "I can't just put a comic book on the screen. People will accuse me of putting a comic book on the screen. I have to take it to another level and put some depth in there." This is too often thought by someone who got the assignment despite not being a true fan of the source material…someone who didn't realize there was already plenty of depth in there.
Or maybe it's just ego. Years ago, I was called in by a producer who wanted to take a stab at adapting Popeye for a new animated project. I will call this producer Harry Shmidlap…
Mr. Shmidlap told me he was a long-time lover of the character…but instantly I knew he wasn't. He had just decided he was because this looked like a lucrative project. He wanted me to perhaps write the script and he sat and learned plenty as I told him the history of Popeye and what I thought the sailorman's appeal was. I asked him if he'd ever read the original newspaper strips by Popeye's creator, Elzie Segar. He said no. I said, "Well, maybe you should because I think the way to do this right is to go back to the original Elzie Segar Popeye."
He looked at me with a scowl and said, "I have no interest in doing the Elzie Segar Popeye. I'm going to do the Harry Shmidlap Popeye."