ki'var@firstsaga.com wrote:

David Dai:
Authors' Foreword: Explaining Ah! My Goddess!

Rod M.
Another Foreword: Explaining John Constantine: Hellblazer

<rant>
YES!!!  Someone finally put in explanations of their source materials.

Those of you who are fond of putting out fics that are based on
less-well-known sources, please take note!  While they obviously don't
cover every aspect of the two series, these two gents have managed to
provide readers with everything they need to know, making it much
easier for those of us who don't know all the material off the top
of our heads.</rant>

Less well known? I guess pretty much the only people on the list  who aren't aware of 

what

AMG and Hellblazer is all about is the Ranma Fanfic Crowd.  John Constantine: 

Hellblazer is

published by DC Comics's Vertigo Comics line, which is quite well known in the comics
world.

Untrue.  I'm a pretty heavy comics reader, DC especially.  However, I 
don't happen to enjoy their Vertigo line very much, so I don't read it. 
 I knew that there was a character named John Constantine who appeared 
in a comic called Hellblazer, but that's all I knew.  The author's note 
was very informative in terms of helping me understand who Constantine 
is and what he does.  Name recognition is one thing, but this fic seems 
to require detailed knowledge of Constantine that normally only a 
'Hellblazer' reader would have.

And the Ranma fanfics don't require the same sort of detailed knowlege in order to make 
any sense of what's going on in those stories?  

Have you ever seen CSN (Comic Shop News) which is a free give away at most Comics 
shops or can be found at their WWW site http://www.dreamsville.com/CSN/ or glanced 
through mags like Wizzard? All they pretty much do is review upcoming issues of books like 
Hellblazer and other such titles.