How Could Peter Do It?

That title sounds more accusatory than I intended…

What I mean is, now that I am at this somewhat flummoxed stage of my DIY Spidey costume, I am at a point where I am asking, “No, seriously…how did this 16 year old kid with very little money seamlessly silkscreen (I’ll give him the sewing part) a bodysuit with such a complex and particular pattern?”

I thought I’d do a little mental simulating of what it would take to do so, based on my experience with attempting to do so.

I am going to assume that with the way the web pattern is represented in the comics–i.e. all connecting nicely from top to bottom, mask to torso to gloves, front to back–that he would have almost had to do one big screen to apply the ink all at once. We can allow that the boots could be done separately, since they don’t have to integrate with the torso pattern. But I am going to hold to the need for the entire torso–including mask and gloves–to integrate smoothly, thus be all printed by one screen.

How big would that screen have to be? Well, I suppose you would need to figure that he would be silkscreening the red portion of the fabric for the torso pre-sewing, and that would include the vertical length from the top of the mask to the bottom of the belt, doubled (front and back, remember?). Based on Peter’s height (5’10”, if memory serves) that would be roughly 60+ inches long, if you figure 30 something inches from head top to waist area depending on his proportions (I’m using myself as a rough guide).

The width is a little tricky. The length from one’s fingertips to fingertips, arms fully outstretched horizontally, roughly equals the height. That would put the screen at 5’10”. But a shirt typically has the arms angling down somewhat, as sewn. Would that cut the height a few inches? Probably.

Still, we’re looking at a screen that is roughly 60+ inches by 60+ inches. To use that kind of screen for the DIY type of screen printing I’ve been working with, you would be talking about laying that screen on the fabric securely and dragging a squeegee across the whole thing to apply the ink. Doesn’t seem very practical. Even assuming that Peter was hiding this massive screen in the attic or something (and hosing it off outside in the middle of the night to clean it?), it raises too many questions to even begin to answer.

Really, at that size, you would be talking about some kind of professional screen printing press. So I am going to assume that he “knew a guy” or something. Someone who ran or worked at a screen printing factory and would do this for him on the sly and on the cheap. And Peter would have had to either set this up anonymously, somehow, or maybe tell the guy something similar to what he led people to believe about his Spidey photos for the bugle, that he and Spider-Man had an arrangement of some kind.

All of this seems to lead to a disturbing conclusion: The chances of a teenager (with the proportional strength, speed, and agility of a spider (gained from being bitten by a radioactive spider) who fights crime to avenge the death of his father-like Uncle that said teen could have prevented had he not been so self-absorbed) making his own spandex costume so expertly with the resources available to him are pretty slim.

Hmph. Imagine that.