When I was first getting into Macross, I wasn't really aware of a broader fandom except through the magazine coverage of the Macross II: Lovers Again OVA's pending release in the US and the accompanying coverage that those magazines gave to the franchise's history. It was just me and my friends from school getting together to play the crappy Palladium Books Macross II RPG for years until the fandom went online in the late 90's. My group didn't have any way to get our hands on Macross publications since there weren't any major anime cons near where I lived yet.False Prophet wrote: ↑Tue Apr 23, 2019 11:53 am Say, Kaiba, what was the Macross fandom like when you joined, or earlier?
My friends who were in the fandom from the outset have indicated that Macross fandom was concentrated in California back in the day, so being on the opposite side of the continent meant I was pretty well locked out of the loop. Even now, the LA area has probably the single biggest concentration of Macross fans in the US and the only dedicated Macross convention (Super Dimension Convention) is held in Torrance, part of the Los Angeles metropolitan area.
Once the fandom had an online presence, you started to see things like UseNet groups and first gen BBS sites that were devoted to Macross fandom. There were also a few sites that cropped up that were dedicated to fans with access to Japan acting as resellers of Macross goods in the US and abroad like Valkyrie Exchange. The rise of Geocities and other freehosting services a few years later enabled the first wave of fansites to grow, with fans trying to create reference sites and RPG supplements and so on. A lot of it was crap, but it was the start of what we've got now. The first two proper Macross reference sites I remember finding via UseNet were the Nanashi's Information Group site and briscojr84's UN Spacy Quartermaster's Tactical Database. Both very rather poorly researched sites, but they were damned enthusiastic about presenting their material (even if Nanashi did have a reputation for refusing to reveal his sources). briscojr84 also provided hosting to the early Macross Mecha Manual site before I did, and most of his reference collection eventually ended up in my private collection when financial troubles forced him to get out of the Macross hobby.
The first name that leaps to mind, among those megafans I know personally, would have to be Shawn Kluek... the co-founder of MacrossWorld. He's got a huge collection of Macross merchandise from the 80's and beyond in his library, including a ton of rare doujinshi and weird stuff most fans don't think about like pencil cases, stamp sets, pool floats, and so on. He did a panel about a bunch of rare Macross collectibles at last year's SDCon.False Prophet wrote: ↑Tue Apr 23, 2019 11:53 am Also, are you aware of any hardcore Macross merchandise collector?
