Gotham City Secret Files & Origins

I got a copy of Gotham City Secret Files & Origins from April 2000 today, and it's a neat resource on post-NML Gotham City. It has a city map, that shows key locations (not very detailed, but it still gives a general idea), conceptual sketches of part of Gotham City's skyline and some of its memorable buildings, and a plan as well as overview sketches of the Batcave, all of which might be quite useful for fan art (probably also of interest for fanfic). Sure, you can see all of that elsewhere too, but I think it's still nice to have some of that in an easy to find issue with at least some annotations. And the one longer story telling the first meeting of the new Batgirl with Catwoman (written by Scott Peterson and Kelley Puckett, pencils by Paul Ryan, inks by Walden Wong) was quite enjoyable too, and introduced several areas of the rebuilt Gotham as well. Though I would have liked some more info about Gotham and its buildings, and (as usual) the "profile pages" on characters are not particularly interesting or informative.

my first fandom...

tzikeh startet this meme...

I guess my first fandom was Duck comics by Carl Barks. My involvement had no clear starting point, since I'd been reading Disney comics before, and I early recognized the ones that were of better quality; also my general involvement in other parts of comic fandom grew alongside, but I've never been as much into any comic as I was into Carl Barks' Duckburgh (or collected so much related stuff for it). It started out as just reading the stories as kid comics, but my understanding, and love for them grew up together with me. I found out more about Carl Barks, collected specifically Duck comics drawn by him (in many different editions, both the German translation, which is for once really good, and the English original), got artist biographies, all kinds of indexes and other reference works listing his comics (chronologically, to find specific character appearances, to find certain themes,...), fanzines and books about Carl Barks and Duckburgh (anything from comic history to Marxist analyses of Duckburgh economy, Duck biology and Duckburgh science, to a collection of all the paintings and art that can be seen in the background, analyzed for the trends in both popular and high art in Duckburgh). I also collected newspaper and magazine articles about Carl Barks and his work, visited exhibitions (thanks to my big brother who was willing to drive me to other cities), in 1993 I became a member of the D.O.N.A.L.D., and I went to the annual D.O.N.A.L.D. gathering that year. Though that wasn't my first convention, I had been to a general comic convention, the Erlanger Comic Salon, the previous year. But for other comics I never knew so many stories and quotes by heart.