U2’s $65 million Spiderman Broadway musical – which, for the record, is the most expensive Broadway musical ever – had some, er, issues on its opening night. But the men behind the production, Bono and the Edge (who also composed the score), feel confident they’re bringing art to life, and that the project is part of an illustrious tradition marrying rock n’ roll and comics. In an interview with MTV, Bono expounded on this theory, and praised comics for their contributions to more “traditional” high art:

"There's always been a thing with punk rock bands and comics. It's always been there. Even the Ramones, who are also from Queens [New York] like Peter Parker and Mary Jane, they covered the theme to Spider-Man. It goes through all, not just rock and roll culture, it's in modern art. You see it in Roy Lichtenstein's work, all the pop artists' work; they all sample from comics."

He went on try to define the stage production -- which sounds like a hodgepodge of (rough-around-the-edges, at least for now) acrobatics and ambitious stage sets -- as its own new kind of art:

"It's like a graphic novel, but a three-dimensional one. I'm calling it a pop-up, pop-art opera, because I'm pretentious."

The Edge, for his part, hailed the show as groundbreaking:

“It is elements of rock and roll, it's elements of circus, it's elements of opera, of musical theater. It is so many different things, and when we started the process, we promised we'd do something that hasn't been done before. And really, we, I think, have managed to do that."

And U2 lived happily and richly ever, regardless of how this whole Spiderman musical thing ends. [MTV]