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Post by Deleted on Mar 23, 2022 7:42:33 GMT -5
My perception is that I am handsome, brave and strong; in reality, I am none of those things (don’t worry, I don’t really think that way).
Someone once said that perception is everything. And it can be. We can all be biased. We can perceive something for better or worse. A perception we have might be at odds with reality. Logic might get us to move beyond the perception, but at other times, our biases might remain.
Like it or not, as a kid, I perceived The Champions to be lesser than either the Avengers or Defenders. How did I articulate it as a kid? I don’t know, as our terminology changes as an adult, but as an adult, I’d say something like, “Does the Champions consist of heroes who couldn’t even make it as an Avenger or Defender?” That may be unfair. It no doubt was. However, I considered the Avengers to be the “Premier League”. The Champions were like “Division Two” or something. Right or wrong, my perception was everything.
This can apply to anything. I loved a lot of wrestling promotions - and at times, some were better than WWF, but my perception was that WWF/WWE was king. As a football fan, the Premier League is the be-all and end-all (I support Aston Villa). The reality is, though, that while I might perceive the lower divisions to be lesser than the Premier League, the objective fact is that they aren’t necessarily; sure, they make less money and aren’t gonna win any major cups any time soon, but their players and the like are no less valuable or better than a Premier League team.
Or what about Coca-Cola and Pepsi? Yes, they taste nice. But even if other brands here in the UK (such as Panda Cola) might taste nice, I’m gonna wager that the average drinker of soft drinks would perceive Coca-Cola and Pepsi to be bigger.
How does one get past perceptions and biases? Who knows? I guess one has to just approach a comic publisher or concept/hero/team on its own merits. I think it’s because the originals cast a big shadow. The Avengers has 59 years of history behind it, so of course an Avengers New Orleans, Avengers Honolulu or Avengers Oregon would probably, most likely, remain in the shadows - despite the possibility that any one of those concepts, with the right writers and artists, could be something special.
Returning to the Champions, I did read the original series recently. I enjoyed it. It had a different flavour, the team had a purpose different from the Avengers and Defenders. So I’m glad I moved beyond my prejudices. It’s just a shame that the human brain can be biased - and that perception can often be flawed.
Any views on either my general points - or any particular perceptions/prejudices you might have had?
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Post by Deleted on Mar 23, 2022 8:24:09 GMT -5
Intriguing question, and I think about it from maybe two angles.
One of which...do you buy "the label" or the actual product? Human psychology is a powerful thing...we develop associations that create impulsive responses based on perceptions that have developed over time.
I'll use an example from the world of cars...I'm a performance car enthusiast, have been since I was a teenager (a bit of Johnny Storm if you will). It was never about having a "luxury" good but truly the driving experience. And while I started with good old USA muscle cars, eventually I started getting more and more into imports and in the 90's got a bit smitten with BMW and the M3 model. Fast forward all these years later and I've been very close to the BMW community, and I truly believe the quality has really gone down over the years. Yet they sell like hotcakes still, people just love having that emblem on their hood.
In this case, I'm not struggling with perception. I didn't buy it for the emblem, and actually, I'm planning to sell/trade my current one towards the new Toyota Supra model that I think will get me a lot more car for the money. But I have friends at work who I know will hear I "traded a BMW for a Toyota" and will think that's somehow a step down when in reality couldn't be farther from the truth.
The second angle I'll come back to comic books, and it's a less logical thing. I will buy say a bad Spider-Man comic book over and over again before I'll experiment with a lesser known independent comic (not that I don't do that as well, just not nearly as often). Not to get too nerdy/weird here, but Spidey is almost like a family member to me, watching his 60's cartoon as a pre-schooler, my first Halloween costume, my first Mego figure, etc. And yet, I've come to the realization that I probably don't actually like the majority of Spider-Man comics in my collection from a pure reading/re-visiting standpoint (Ditko era is gold for me though). Yet as soon as I see him on the cover, even as a guest, I get this happy feeling/association. It's a strong mixed perception with familiarity conflicting with being disappointed on many occasions with the actual reading experience. And I really don't know how to get past that, it kind of is what it is at this point.
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Post by arfetto on Mar 23, 2022 9:20:20 GMT -5
I think I might have the opposite problem. I tend to gravitate towards the "unknown", and so I end up having a deficiency of knowledge concerning the "big leagues" haha. For example, using the wrestling example...I spent much of my younger years watching all the Osaka Pro and Arsion wrestling events I could get, but I've yet to see a single Wrestlemania event in full. So if someone wants to type about Kuishinbo Kamen or Mariko Yoshida, I'll be able to discuss them, but mention The Rock and I'll be pretty lost haha (well, unless you want to type about Flex Kavana from USWA and then I've got a few things to say haha). But I do intend to get around to WWF eventually. I guess I have a "save the big things for last" mentality concerning entertainment, and this applies to comic books as well.
I don't know why I am like this, but whether its comics or movies or video games, I get into the small stuff first and work my way up to the big. Like superhero comics, I am well versed in Valiant, Defiant, Broadway, Ultraverse, but have huge gaps in my DC and Marvel knowledge. Perhaps it is because I am a completionist so it is less daunting to get a full run of Valiant or Ultraverse than DC and Marvel. But even within Marvel and DC, it will be like...I've read all the Nocenti/JRJR Daredevil stuff but still haven't read Miller's Daredevil run (besides the JRJR drawn Man without Fear limited series Miller wrote).
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Post by codystarbuck on Mar 23, 2022 11:47:35 GMT -5
I think I might have the opposite problem. I tend to gravitate towards the "unknown", and so I end up having a deficiency of knowledge concerning the "big leagues" haha. For example, using the wrestling example...I spent much of my younger years watching all the Osaka Pro and Arsion wrestling events I could get, but I've yet to see a single Wrestlemania event in full. So if someone wants to type about Kuishinbo Kamen or Mariko Yoshida, I'll be able to discuss them, but mention The Rock and I'll be pretty lost haha (well, unless you want to type about Flex Kavana from USWA and then I've got a few things to say haha). But I do intend to get around to WWF eventually. I guess I have a "save the big things for last" mentality concerning entertainment, and this applies to comic books as well. I don't know why I am like this, but whether its comics or movies or video games, I get into the small stuff first and work my way up to the big. Like superhero comics, I am well versed in Valiant, Defiant, Broadway, Ultraverse, but have huge gaps in my DC and Marvel knowledge. Perhaps it is because I am a completionist so it is less daunting to get a full run of Valiant or Ultraverse than DC and Marvel. But even within Marvel and DC, it will be like...I've read all the Nocenti/JRJR Daredevil stuff but still haven't read Miller's Daredevil run (besides the JRJR drawn Man without Fear limited series Miller wrote). What about Akino, Ayako Hamada or Mari Apache? |
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Post by codystarbuck on Mar 23, 2022 12:03:37 GMT -5
I learned at a very young age not to trust advertising and hype. Having my morning viewing of Space Angel and Underdog interrupted by the Watergate Hearings was a formative experience in cynicism (the President lied?). Add to that the consumer affairs program, Fight Back, with David Horowitz and I became a staunch disbeliever of all commercials.
I loved comics, pure and simple. Newspaper comics, one-panel magazine gags and comic books. I read any comic that came into my grubby little fingers. Richie Rich? Awesome! Archie? Hand it over! Betty & Veronica? Sure! Westerns? Yahoo, cowboys! War comics? Just like the movies! Romance comics? A little whiny, but the art is pretty good. Funny animals? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Superheroes? Cool!
DC? Great! Marvel? Well, that's different! Gold Key? Ooh, Space Family Robinson and Dagar!
If anything, the constant hype at Marvel tended to turn me off being a company person; but, that didn't stop me from perusing one of their comics. For that era, though, I tended to go more for the fringe stuff, than the mainstream. War of the Worlds, Deathlok, Master of Kung Fu, The Eternals, Defenders, Marvel Two-in-One. Dc was Warlord, JLA, Batman, Green Lantern/Green Arrow, Flash, the odd Wonder Woman, Superboy & the Legion, New Teen Titans. It just kind of depended on whether the story grabbed me or the art.
By the time the 80s independents started popping up, I would read most anything and I started sampling, as soon as I encountered them. The problem of the indies was often finding them, or finding earlier issues to jump into the story. It was a little hard to get into Love and Rockets, with an ongoing storyline, when the few issues I found were always in the middle of the story and no one had back issues. Thank you Bud Plant for giving me an alternative to the local comic shops for getting book collections. I finally got to read Modesty Blaise because of the Ken Pierce editions, after seeing one intriguing panel in Maurice Horn's World Encyclopedia of Comics (which primed me to read a lot of stuff, from around the world).
Perception reflects belief and can be shaped by many influences; but, it can also evolve, as experiences add new context to things. I wasn't a fan of Kirby's more impressionistic art, in the mid-70s, though I liked reprints of his older stuff. Jump ahead to the mid-late 80s and my view changed, as I started to see more than chunky bodies and odd angles and saw the raw power of the story and understood more of the themes.
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Post by arfetto on Mar 23, 2022 13:50:31 GMT -5
What about Akino, Ayako Hamada or Mari Apache? (I turned this footage into an animated gif just for this response haha)
Hamada was probably my favorite wrestler there after Yoshida. I haven't followed her since, though.
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Post by adamwarlock2099 on Mar 23, 2022 14:21:42 GMT -5
To use a non-comic related analogy, perception is the difference between infatuation and love. One looks at just the surface, but the other looks in depth. Yet they can both feel the same and seem as real as we perceive it to be. Just as infatuation can turn into love, love can turn into despair.
The difference is how honest we want to be with ourselves. When our perception of something feels good and makes us happy, why change it? But honestly the rift between infatuation and love is huge. So too could be the difference between someone's perception of the Kree/Skrull War and AoA. I think the only rational to perceptions is objectivity. But then again just like human emotions, objectivity isn't always easy to solidify to gain a non-biased perspective.
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Post by codystarbuck on Mar 23, 2022 15:01:11 GMT -5
What about Akino, Ayako Hamada or Mari Apache? (I turned this footage into an animated gif just for this response haha)
Hamada was probably my favorite wrestler there after Yoshida. I haven't followed her since, though.
Sadly, she got pretty messed up with drugs. She was brought into TNA, for a while and worked AAA, as well as Japan. In 2018 she was busted for possession of Meth and got a 3-year suspended sentence. I had a few Arsion tapes and she was at the center of most of them. I wasn't as big of a fan of Arsion after Lioness Asuka took over as the booker, compared to Aja Kong. Liked Michiko Omukai, Mari & Faby Apache and Mima Shimoda, aside from Kong, Ayako and Mika Akino. Wanted to like Cand Okutsu, as Tiger Dream, but she was really sloppy with the Tiger Mask moves and the gimmick never really went anywhere. Also, Hiroshi "Rossy" Ogawa, the promoter, seemed to be a pretty shady character and I heard some stories about some of the things that the women had to do. Similar to his current promotion, Stardom. Given he was one of the people involved in the crash of All-Japan Women, why anyone would do business with him is beyond me, other than young people desperate for fame. Vice TV had a piece on Stardom (before the Dark Side of the Ring series) and it all looked pretty shady in that, though the narrator/journalist seems to be too much of a fan to call out Ogawa about the exploitation of the young women. |
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Post by berkley on Mar 24, 2022 16:40:45 GMT -5
So it seems!
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Post by Deleted on Mar 24, 2022 16:52:28 GMT -5
“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.” - William Blake
Not to be "pseudo-intellectual" here, but I think this really does speak volumes.
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Post by codystarbuck on Mar 24, 2022 21:26:54 GMT -5
What about Akino, Ayako Hamada or Mari Apache? (I turned this footage into an animated gif just for this response haha)
Hamada was probably my favorite wrestler there after Yoshida. I haven't followed her since, though.
That also demonstrates the difference between wrestling then and now. Hamada executes the leg scissor takeover quickly and accurately, while Mari Apache rolls with it and looks like she is trying to counter, as Hamada goes into the submission. Too many modern guys try to do stuff like this but look too cooperative, when doing it. That's the difference between maintaining the illusion and showing the slight of hand directly to the audience. Back to the comics...... |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 25, 2022 10:14:45 GMT -5
This topic has continued to percolate a bit in the back of my mind, and I had a realization this morning that it likely ties into something I reflect on often these days. Some background to set up the context of my thoughts here:
My key comic book reading years as a kid were from about '77 to '86, with my final new comics trickling in around '87. I took a break from comics until sometime in the early 90's (was a little more busy playing in a band and other priorities, plus I wasn't quite digging the changes that were happening to my old favorite titles).
I forget exactly how it happened, but I suddenly realized how much I missed comic books and started picking up some newer Spider-Man, and that snowballed into full collecting again. Yes, it was the 90's and some of the material had bad art and whatnot, but I found plenty of titles that were either just light fun, or intrigued me a bit more. Doom 2099, Astro City, Untold Tales of Spider-Man...and later in the decade stuff like Tom Strong (among several other titles)...this stuff was as good as anything I had read back in the day.
What's my point? I did not yet have a strong perception that "modern comics are bad, older comics are good". And in fact, going the opposite direction, all of this classic material from not only the Silver Age but the elusive Golden Age as well was getting reprinted like gangbusters in the 90's by way of the Archive editions and Marvel Masterworks. It was like an explosion of decades of reading material, in that regard it was still a great time to be a comic book fan.
It was 1999 when the first slight hint came that my tastes were not quite keeping pace with where things were headed. John Byrne was still a favorite creator of mine (despite some of his prior more infamous character treatments), and his Spider-Man Chapter One came out. In hindsight, maybe it wasn't a home run, but I actually thought it was kind of cool and would be a big hit. Then Ultimate Spider-Man came out the next year, and I remember thinking "Byrne's version was so much cooler". But popular opinion was WAY different, and for the first time ever as a collector/reader, I remember thinking, is my "era" coming to an end?
Still, at the dawn of the 2000's I was in for a bit. Busiek was still going strong (like Avengers Forever leading to Busiek/Perez on Avengers ongoing), Alan Moore on stuff like the aforementioned Tom Strong and other titles like Top Ten. Earth X was a really cool concept I thought. And even into the mid-2000's, I wasn't quite out yet. I did like the very initial start of New Avengers just because of the scope of heroes and villains involved, and the David Finch art looked cool to me, though hated it shortly thereafter (it was this build-up to nothing, and Finch left shortly thereafter). Stuff like Immortal Iron Fist kept me going as well. A good portion of the earlier Invincible run was fun too.
So where am I going with this? By about 2010, while it wasn't something that happened overnight, I think I was finally there with the conclusion I was no longer excited about new comics overall. It was never going to be the same again. I think it's something that's happened to a good number of folks here at some point on their journeys as well.
Now to finally bring it back to "perceptions". All this time, I never really considered any decade as "superior". I loved certain Silver Age titles, I loved certain Bronze Age titles, I loved certain 90's titles with a little crossover into the 2000's...it was all good. But my brain over the last 10 years plus has started to really "compartmentalize" things by time period. If I'm going back issue shopping, I find myself primarily hunting mid-to-late 70's comic books that would have been on the newsstand during my earlier reading years (plus a decent amount of Silver Age material as well).
Since I already have a pretty large collection of material from that era including all my old favorites, I'm just scraping away at anything that looks readable at this point. Because the familiarity of both the visual look of that age and general approach to storytelling is outweighing my desire to find something new. Sure, you could say that's just normal if you don't dig modern comics, I'm far from alone there. But I think it's more than that...my "perception" on some of that older material isn't leading to as much quality reading material being added to my collection overall. It's almost like I've taken my ball and gone home to 1978 because I don't want to play in this time anymore.
I'm not sure if all that makes sense...but I guess the more succinct version is my "perception" of any 70's book (bad or not) is now strongly outweighing later material because of the long journey I just described above.
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