I am sooooo eager to truly get started with screen printing the costume, but really getting down to it has been delayed partly by circumstance and partly by an intentional slowdown for careful planning of next steps. Once I start laying down ink, I can’t take it back, so I want to be sure I try my best to plan it all very carefully. But it’s not exactly the kind of detail worth sharing on here. Which is really saying something, considering the level of detail I have shared here up to this point!
In the meantime, I do want to share some Spidey-related stuff. Usually, I try to keep this costume themed, but today’s entry is just general Spidey fun. I can make it connect, however, in that I am sharing something from the 60’s era of Spidey comics.
In my reading and re-reading of the earliest Spider-Man comics, I am into the year 1967, several issues into the John Romita, sr. artwork, and–oh my gosh–the 60’s lingo is awesome. Or, I should say, it is “the living end.”
This page in particular–a portion of Peter’s very first time meeting Mary Jane–is particularly dense with 60’s-speak:
I think I counted 10 instances of what I would consider rather outstanding decade-specific words or phrases. Ha! I love it.
And it does touch on something that I think makes comics somewhat unique as a literary form. (Yeah, I just called comics a literary form. Read “Understanding Comics” by Scott McCloud if you feel like you need more of a case for that idea. Of course, if you’re reading this blog, there’s a good chance I’m preaching to the choir, as it were…)
Anyway, I was going to say that a cool thing about comics–particularly long-running titles like Spider-Man–is how the characters and stories span decades, and the comics from each decade serve to, in many ways, reflect and encapsulate the time and culture in which they were written.
And it’s more than just slang. Another part of the story in the issues I’m currently reading has Flash going off to fight in the Vietnam war. The characters don’t get heavily into the politics of the situation, but Flash does make specific references to the goings-on. (Spoiler alert: he even ends up losing his legs as a soldier, but I can’t recall at the moment whether that is in this war or later when he goes to the Middle East. (Yeah, comic characters don’t age normally, as you might have gathered….))
So, there’s your classic Spidey speech for the day. Off to do a bit more planning and coffee drinking before starting the workday!
Up Next: Surely I will get to some actual screen printing stuff soon, right?
Spider-Man Mashup Cosplay Costume: 