20 Years Later…A Crawlspace Retrospective

Twenty years sure flies by when you’re thwipping. It was in the wee small hours of the morning of August 8, 1998 when I stumbled upon Geociites.com.  I saw flashing animated gifs that offered to help me create a website for free. How could I turn that down? I mean the price was right.  This was long before web editing programs that make is so much easier now. I learned how to manually type in html code. I was really proud of my self that I learned how to create a spider-web background and post a picture of John Byrne’s Spider-Man: Chapter One on the front page. This task took several hours on my Windows 95 computer that was connected to dial up. On August 8, 1998 I was entering my senior year of college, I was single, and loved Spider-Man. Fast forward to August 8, 2018 I’m entering my second full year of teaching television production, I’m married and have a beautiful little eight  year old daughter and still love Spider-Man.

I really never thought I’d still be updating this website. How many things are you doing the same from 20 years ago? So why do I still enjoy it? It’s the friends I’ve made from this website. When I grew up there wasn’t any kids in my school that read comic books. I’d read an issue of Amazing Spider-Man and want to talk about it with someone, but it was just me. This site lets me share my love of Spider-Man to the whole world. The message board was my first real interaction with fellow fans, but the podcast really took it to another level. I started that in 2006 with Zach, Kevin and JR and I’m consistently amazed how far that show reaches around the world. When we do call in shows I hear from people in England who listen to the show on their phones on the bus. People in Sweeden have told me how they take me and the gang for a walk while listening to the show. In 2017 we started streaming the show live on youtube when we record it. I’m again amazed how many take time out of their day to interact and talk Spider-Man with my pals.

Here are a couple of highlights that come to mind of working on the site for 20 years.

• Interviewing my favorite artists. Mark Bagley, John Romita Jr, Sal Buscema, Ron Frenz all were awesome.
• Interviewing my favorite writers: Roger Stern, Tom DeFalco,Gerry Conway, J. M. DeMatteis, Howard Mackie, Peter David were so cool.
• Interviewing my favorite voice actors: Paul Soles, the 1967 Spider-Man, Josh Keaton: The Spectacular Spider-Man, Dan Gilvezan and Kathy Garver were Amazing Friends.
• My interactions with Stan Lee: Josh  having Stan Lee bless the birth of my baby with a congrats recording was so special. I also loved hearing Stan on our podcast celebrating Sal Buscema.
• Having the Crawlspace being spotlighted in Entertainment Weekly, CNN, USA Today, Wizard Magazine and in the Spider-Girls letter’s page in Marvel Comics.
• Going to comic book conventions and having people recognize me from the site.
• Friendships: There are so many people that I consider dear friends, but I have never met them in person. All of these people have met through this website. I consider all the podcast panelists dear friends and it really is a joy to meet up with them once a month and talk Spidey with a few thousand people watching and listening.

I will be honest, I have thought a few times about giving up the website. It’s crossed my mind when I didn’t have any free time to update it. I’ve thought about hanging it up when money was tight and the cost for web hosting started to get too expensive. I’ve also thought about hanging up the web shooters when certain comic creators take pot shots at the site for being negative or unfair. Honestly, the negative aspects of running the site will never outweigh the positive of it.
So if this is your first day on the site or your 20th year, let’s celebrate. I am really proud of this site and am happy it’s turning 20 years old. Will I still be updating it in 2038 at age 63? Never say never.