I’m going to start off this article by admitting a bias: I love musicals.

I love ‘em. Everything about them. The music, the theatricality, the stories, just everything.

But that’s not to say I love every musical. When they’re bad, they’re really bad.

Recently, we’ve come to learn that stories centered around vampires make terrible, terrible musicals. Dracula, Lestat, and Dance of the Vampires have proven to us that while bloodsuckers are fun to watch on the screen, they don’t necessarily translate to semi-operatic theatrics.

Don’t sing, Lestat. Just kill people.

But what of the superhero genre? Does that stand a chance?

A lot of people are hoping the answer is yes, including director Julie Taymor, who found Broadway triumph with her radical adaptation of The Lion King, and Bono and The Edge of U2, who wrote the score.

So far, there has been only one other mounting of a superhero musical, at least to my knowledge. The show in question was called It’s a Bird … It’s a Plane … it’s Superman, which originally ran for a mere 129 performances in 1966.

And while there have been rumors in the past few years of a Broadway version of Batman, they remain just that: rumors.

Nonetheless, Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark is set to open on Broadway on December 21st, after being delayed numerous times and suffering major cast changes — which once, but no longer, included Evan Rachel Wood and Alan Cumming.

At this point, it’s anyone’s guess whether the show will be a hit or a flop. Taymor is a visionary director, and she certainly knows her way around big special effects. What’s more, the director seems to have a true respect for the material. In an article for the New York Times, Taymor said, “The singing and the drama and the emotionality, that comes from Peter Parker’s conflicts — how does he have a regular life, a girlfriend. Those are the traumas that cause the songs to happen. When it’s Spider-Man flying, it’s action.”

But then there’s the music. While I think few can argue that Bono and The Edge know how to write a hit song every now and then, the one song that has premiered so far was met with a tepid response from the fan community. A few weeks ago, the band Carney, fronted by Reeve Carney (the man set to play Peter Parker) debuted the song, titled “Boy Falls from the Sky,” on Good Morning America.

While the song does admittedly have a catchy hook, Carney sings like the rock musician he is, as opposed to a Broadway singer. Right now he’s untested as to whether he can handle belting out songs for two hours eight times a week with little time for his voice and throat to recuperate.

And let’s be honest — Carney reads a little too emo, doesn’t he?

There’s no doubt the production values will be impressive, as Taymor has never shied away from spectacle. And who knows? Bono and The Edge may surprise us with their versatility when we hear the final score. But the best part of the Spider-man mythos is Peter Parker himself, which means the entire production rests on Carney’s shoulders.

I’m reserving judgment until I see the finished product. Hey, it can’t be any worse than Spider-man 3, right?

• Andrew Garfield is about to become a mega-household name with the Spider-man reboot, and The Hollywood Reporter gets him to open up. (For an extra dose of Garfield in a geeky part, check out his role in the Doctor Who “Daleks in Manhattan” episodes.)

• Blastr has an awesome list of 37 products based on Darth Vader that may not live up to the Sith Lord’s fearsome image. Come on, man. Pez? That is so not the dark side.

• For all my fellow twenty-somethings with a penchant for nostalgia out there, rejoice! Telltale Games has just optioned Back to the Future and Jurassic Park for video game-age!

• This isn’t necessarily fantasy-specific to the exclusion of other genres, but it’s pretty interesting: the guy who wrote the notorious “Jump the Shark” episode of Happy Days finally speaks out. While you can use that phrase for any show, God knows the world of fantasy has had its share of shark-jumpin’.

• The Ten Strangest Creative Liberties Ever Taken on Superhero TV Shows. There are no words.
  

• According to British tabloid The Sun, actor Martin Freeman turned down the role of Bilbo Baggins. The operative word here, however, is tabloid, so this could be as realistic as The Hobbit coming out next year. (Yeah, ouch.)

• For a while, I was a musical theater performer here in New York, and that experience taught me that sometimes … you just have to sing it out. Here, I’ll let the big guy explain:

• And if that dose of hilarity wasn’t enough for ya, the ever-outrageous folks at College Humor have tackled a subject that we’ve discussed here before — namely how is it possible M. Night Shyamalan keeps getting work? (Glad we’re not the only ones who see it!) Small world story: I actually know the actor playing the creepy bald guy, Josh Ruben. You’ve never looked better, Josh!

• As we all know, the odious Proposition 8 regarding gay marriage was deemed unconstitutional and struck down in California. io9 gives us their opinion through a decidedly science fiction lens.

• I think I’ve made my opinion of the Lost finale quite clear on this site — it sucked as few things in the universe have sucked before it. So it almost hurts to read this collection of theories about Lost written during the run of the series, because each one is about a bajillion times better than the actual ending.

• Ah, geekdom. Some Avengers fan took it upon himself to create a trailer for a non-existent Avengers film from the 50’s using a smorgasbord of source material. See how many you can name!

• If there’s one project that rivals The Hobbit in being stuck in development hell, it’s the big-budget Broadway Spider-man musical. However, that hasn’t stopped them from naming an opening date. Now, as it happens, I’m the only member of TheTorchOnline.com’s staff that lives in New York. Normally, I don’t like to whine, but … Breeeennnnt, can you get me tickets?

• Remember when we called the end of the superhero craze? Well, guess what. Matthew Vaughn, who’s set to direct X-Men: First Class, agrees.

• So this is … a little weird. Turns out the superhero genre and the hand-held genre (think Cloverfield) are about to merge.

• I’m not a huge fan of H.P. Lovecraft, but I do know that he’s a god among horror fans. So kinda weird that his work is getting the cutesy anime treatment, don’t ya think?

• Alien abduction films are nothing new, but this trailer for the upcoming film Skyline looks fairly impressive for the little it shows us, particularly the disturbing last scene.

• Don’t let the title fool you — the upcoming Archangels has nothing to do with archangels and is not in the vein of the recent warrior-angel flick, Legion. Instead, it’s all about aliens. Cool, right?

• Over at Aint it Cool News, columnist Quint started a pretty cool new column called Behind the Scenes Pic of the Day, and their most recent edition has an awesome pic of Heath Ledger’s Joker.

• This isn’t that new, but I thought this list was pretty cool: the Top 10 Fictional Male Charmers, which includes a few fantasy characters in there, like Lancelot and Han Solo.

• I’m going to get carpal tunnel syndrome from reporting all the news about The Hobbit, including this tidbit that Peter Jackson is reportedly meeting with actors to join the cast.

• Of all the millions of superheroes in the world, my absolute favorites are the X-Men, and io9 has a list of the 5 most tear-jerking X-Men deaths. I bet you’ll just never guess who’s number one.

• In other superhero news, Slashfilm has some casting news for the upcoming Spider-man and Superman reboots.

• And finally, since M. Night Shyamalan’s quality of work is just so high right now — yeah, ouch — here’s a trailer for a movie he did NOT write or direct, but did come up with the story for, called Devil.

• Best of both worlds? The Spider-man team met with the Avatar team to discuss filming the next episode of the webslinger saga in 3-D.

• Speaking of Avatar, here’s a fun little story about how the power of love changed the ending of one particular screening of the movie on Valentine’s Day.

• And in case this just wasn’t enough Avatar news for you blue-cat-monkey-people lovers, James Cameron is planning to write a prequel to the blockbuster … in the form of a novel.

• In the never-ending avalanche of both remakes and franchises, this article speaks of the efforts to turn Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein novels into a series of films. Anyone excited about this? Hands?

• I know everyone out there is just dying for more vampire stories, something our culture is almost completely deprived of, so thank the powers that be that The Vampire Diaries has been picked up for another season. The article is informative, but I found calling the CW the “C-Dub” and the show’s performance its “perf” to be just on this side of obnoxious.

• And while we’re on the subject of vampires (don’t you love these segues?), here’s another potential 3-D story for you. Turns out that the masterminds behind the Twilight saga are trying to figure out if they want to project Taylor Lautner’s glorious six-pack abs into the third dimension.

• What’s that, you say? Can’t get enough of Megan Fox’s bust? Well, neither can a lot of people, but fortunately, you can soon own it when these busts are released as a tie-in to the Jonah Hex movie. Horndogs everywhere, you’re welcome.

• I’ll just own this: Lord of the Rings is my favorite fantasy story of all time, and I own all the various incarnations of DVD’s, including the pretty craptastic Ralph Bakshi cartoon. LOTR was the book/movie/video game series that made me a fantasy fanboy, and it will always have a special place in my heart. Therefore, I get majorly psyched when someone with the same love in their hearts busts out the elbow grease and makes a fan film such as Born of Hope. May I suggest a trip to their website? The trailer is below:

You can’t swing a dead mutant around these days without hitting a movie theater playing a Marvel comic film. An overwhelming amount of films based on the X-Men and Avengers books are on their way, and that’s just the tip of the Bobby Drake-created iceberg.

With the original Blade film, Marvel proved they could take a lesser known character and turn it into a reasonably profitable film, thus opening the doors for the first X-Men and Spider-Man movies, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Now all their main heroes either already have or very soon will have movies of their own, and the cinematic Marvel universe is becoming almost as overpopulated as its funny book equivalent. But what about the great characters they haven’t tapped yet?

A few that spring to mind:

The Black Cat — Felicia Hardy’s anti-hero alter ego is the prima donna of the Spider-man series, a morally ambiguous and emotionally complex character, and looks damn good in black leather. But the Spider-man films so far have had an unwritten rule that women are only allowed to pout, look tempting, or be kidnapped, thus sadly the Black Cat has been absent from the silver screen.

She would make a great addition to the series: beyond the fact that she would be a nice foil for Mary Jane, she is practically Spider-man’s physical equal, and could provide some nice rooftop sexual tension the likes of which we haven’t seen since Batman Returns.

Of course, I’m not suggesting hastily adding her to one of the future films just for the sake of having her there - remember what happened to Venom.

Apocalypse – Really? ALL those X-Men films on the horizon and no whispers yet of the biggest baddie of them all? Apocalypse has been making life hell for the X-men, and in fact, much of the world, since the days of Ancient Egypt, and isn’t looking to slow down any time soon.

We only got a small dose of Warren Worthington 111, aka Angel, in X-Men 3, but that character’s storyline with Apocalypse is unforgettable. Born rich, smooth, blond, and handsome (if angel wings are your thing), Warren was a fun-loving playboy until a devastating battle in which he lost his wings. After this, Apocalypse transformed him into an evil follower, turning his skin blue and giving him razor-sharp metal wings. Though he eventually turned good again, Warrne was never the same. And that’s just a taste of the nastiness Apocalypse gets up to.

Northstar – I’m just going to put this out there: it’s time for a gay super-hero on screen. I’m sure studios are iffy about the idea, worrisome that it may be too risky a venture, but the world is ready. While the Marvel universe has a small handful of LGBT characters, none is more well-known than Northstar, the first Marvel superhero to come out of the closet, and in 1992, no less.

Northstar has a very cinematic appeal: handsome, edgy, and the movie-friendly powers of super-speed and flight. Hopefully in one of the estimated 26,985 X-men films coming out in the next few years, Northstar just may pop up. Fingers crossed.

Moonstar – While we’re on the topic of inclusion, a demographic that’s widely overlooked on the big screen is Native Americans (and it currently seems that their only filmic representation is as werewolves in the Twilight series). Marvel has always been ahead of its time in its inclusion of minorities, and one of these examples is the New Mutants’ Danielle Moonstar, who could communicate telepathically with animals as well as project bursts of psionic energy.

There is some chatter about a New Mutants film some day, and let’s hope that Moonstar is part of the action.

These are only a few examples of currently-overlooked characters. We all have characters we’d like to see. Feel free to share some of your own.

Franchises, like Goonies, never say die, and Marvel is a company built on franchises. Now with their own film company, Marvel is bringing the complexity of their comic book universe to the silver screen. Here’s a look at some of their upcoming projects.

X-Men

Arguably Marvel’s most popular title (and the flagship of an infinite number of X-book spin-offs), the X-Men have appeared thus far in three movies, and Wolverine just had his first solo outing. What’s next? There are a few possibilities:

X-Men: First Class - A film focusing on the younger members of the X-Men clan, namely Iceman, Rogue, Kitty Pryde, Angel, and Jubilee, as well as others, who get up to their own wacky high school adventures without Storm and Wolverine, two of the few surviving adults from the X-Men trilogy. The verdict? A possibility, but Shawn Ashmore and Anna Paquin are a little long in the tooth to play high school students, which may mean…

X-Men 4 - The long-rumored fourth entry into the main X-Men franchise may just be another version of First Class, since many of the first few films’ stars are not contractually obligated to appear, which means they can hold out for more money. But why pay the big bucks when you can just use other, younger, less expensive actors (like Paquin and Ashmore)?

Wolverine 2 - This is almost a sure thing, as talk of a sequel began even before the first Wolvy film opened, and despite being a critical flop, the film did okay in the numbers. Expect it to cover the samurai era of Logan’s past.

Deadpool - Ryan Reynolds is a hot ticket these days, and rumor is he’s been longing for a hero franchise of his own ever since playing second fiddle to Wesley Snipes in Blade: Trinity. But now that he’s scored the part of Green Lantern in the upcoming film, will two superhero franchises feel like overkill?

X-Men Origins: Magneto - Though it’s been in “development” for a long time now, not much progress has been made on this one. It’s not an easy task to design a prequel film focusing on a villain, so whether it will ever see the light of day is anyone’s guess.

Blade

Speaking of prequels about villains being a bad idea…

Untitled Blade Prequels - As if one film weren’t bad enough, actor Stephen Dorff, who played villain Deacon Frost in the first film, had this to say about an upcoming project:

“It will be a prequel to the ‘Blade’ movies, Deacon’s story. It’s a new trilogy the director [Stephen Norrington] has created. It will [be] cool.”

You read that correctly - not just one film, but a trilogy.

Avengers

The extraordinarily well-received Iron Man was the first step towards a filmic tapestry leading up to The Avengers, as displayed by the final scene in which Tony Stark is approached by Nick Fury to speak with him about “the Avengers initiative,” and then Tony Stark’s cameo in The Incredible Hulk where he mentions a “team.” This sort of cross-pollination is enough to make even casual readers geek out, so here’s a look at what’s to come.

Iron Man 2 - Duh.

The First Avenger: Captain America - Though it has an unnecessary prefix, the Captain America movie was the first and most obvious choice when building a slew of films gearing up towards the Avengers. Shooting is set to begin next summer.

Thor - Shakespearean actor/director Kenneth Branagh is helming the epic fantasy about the mythical Norse god Odin. Super props to Marvel for not shying away from this utterly magical piece of the Avengers puzzle in the wake of the Dark Knight-inspired love for grittier, realistic superhero flicks.

And, of course:

The Avengers - The current expected premier date of The Avengers is May of 2012, which means they have to work fast with the other films if they want to make that goal.

Spider-Man

Oh, yeah, they’re making Spider-Man 4. And 5 and 6. These could really go either way. I’m hoping they’re like the first 2 and not the unwatchable Spider-Man 3.