Especially if he is not using his artificial but organic web.
Also what happens to the web that he leaves behind? Does it decay after certain time or lose it stickiness and drops off?
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2I don't remember the source (hence a comment instead of an answer), but the webbing is either evaporitive or deliquescent; not sure which one. Either way, it vanishes after some time, preventing spidey from leaving trails all around the city. From the page you linked to: "Its exact composition is unknown, but after about an hour, the webbing breaks down, loses strength and eventually evaporates," As I recall, he had 30 refills he carried with him, and they were charged at 300 psi; not sure how much it would make, nor what he could do organically, tho.– K-H-WCommented Jul 30, 2012 at 5:18
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@KeithHWeston Does it really take one hour to decompose? If this is true, he would be easy to follow around the city.– EveCommented Jul 30, 2012 at 10:33
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A lot of Sam Raimi Spidey fans have come to the conclusion that organic webbing means 'unlimited webbing'. Not the case. Actual spiders produce silk almost constantly, but only at a limited rate. If one was to "milk" the spider for its silk, presumably in one continuous reeling of a silk thread, the glands storing the silk dope would empty before being able to replace the lost silk. Apply this rule to organic-webbing Spider-Man and it's obvious that he couldn't cover, say, an entire New York skyscraper in webbing in one go. Unrealistic to the extreme!– Arachno-SapienCommented Dec 12, 2013 at 2:56
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4Related: how much spiderweb could a spider-man web if a spider-man could web webs?– Paul D. WaiteCommented Dec 9, 2015 at 12:03
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1I remember reading (a looooong time ago) a spidey comic where some kind of super-samurai villain slices basement columns of an (under construction?) multi-story building with his sword as a getaway tactic. Spiderman has to stray, and keeps the building from falling / collapsing by webbing many H-beams to the sliced column as reinforcements. Two or three frames (and many H-beams later), he's utterly exhausted from handling the H-beams, and mutters "almost out of web...". That's not a strong metric, but I'd say "as much as the plot asks for", and "quite a lot". ;-)– DevSolarCommented Mar 10, 2017 at 11:54
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2 Answers
It has been explained in various tellings of Spider-man that his webbing disintegrates or dissolves after a period of up to maybe an hour. Not only disintegrates, but disintegrates entirely, leaving no trace whatsoever.
This image says it happens just after a few minutes:
However, I have read a lot of Spider-man, and I can not recall ever seeing the time in which it dissolves be a plot point. For example, the webbing always lasts until the cops arrive to arrest a captured villain. I've never seen, for example, the cops be late, the webbing dissolve, and the crook get away. (I would love to be shown an example of that happening, though.)
When his webbing is inorganic, the length of time a cartridge of web fluid can last is never explained clearly. It's reasonable to assume that this information would only get in the way of a writer's freedom to create drama by having the web fluid run out at key moments. Web fluid running out does happen, we just never know exactly how much webbing Spider-man had shot leading up to it.
There's lots of explanation about the variety of webs, how far it can shoot, how many cartridges and whatnot, just not much explanation about exactly how much he has.
I don't think you will get an answer on that, because the question immediately raised is, how much does he need? How much webbing does it take, for example, to swing from midtown to downtown Manhattan? A writer could make up a number, but then they'd just be opening themselves up to the nitpicking of obsessive fans.
The organic web shooting has, so far as I know, only been proposed in the recent Spider-man movies. Within those movies, the amount he has available is never explained. We can guess that it would be tied to his biological function, similar to how much saliva a person can produce, and dependant on diet and whatnot. Since it's never addressed, though, it's entirely speculation.
answered Jul 30, 2012 at 6:47
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I can remember the dissolving being a plot point, vaguely, in a cartoon: A copycat uses permanent webbing– IzkataCommented Aug 16, 2014 at 17:46
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"I didn't want my enemies to stay tied up forever." Or stay in jail forever. There wouldn't be as many sequels. Commented Sep 21, 2014 at 8:38
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3In Spider-Man #38 - Light the Night, Part 1, Spider-Man webs up a purse-snatcher for the police, and we later see the purse-snatcher walking free, saying the cops didn't come until the webbing dissolved. It was part of the plot, however - that mugger was a somewhat major character of the arc, motivated by his feelings of being ignored and not respected. Commented Jul 27, 2016 at 21:06
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1@MartianInvader, cool! I've always wondered if the writers ever addressed that issue, and it turns out they have. Thanks for the info! Commented Jul 28, 2016 at 8:08
In Spider-Man Animated series(1994), when Mysterio faked himself as Spider-man, Peter Parker found that Mysterio's duplicate web doesn't decompose with time like how his own does. That is the episode where Spider-man mentioned to the audience that his web decomposes with time and nothing is left after half an hour to one hour.
But how much web he can produce from one cartridge is never established in any animated show or comics I am familiar with. It seems to be based on the requirement of the story, sometime cartridge ends very soon and sometime does not.
answered Jul 30, 2012 at 12:02
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You didn't answer the first part of the question, or what was presented in the title (how much web can he produce?) Commented Jul 27, 2016 at 14:04
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