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Bill Maher Disrespects Stan Lee's Legacy And Questions The Importance Of Comic Books

posted 6 years ago by Satan2016 (25577)
26 replies | jump to latest

OMG, Comic Books are for kids!

https://comicbook.com/marvel/2018/11/17/bill-maher-comic-books-stan-lee-disrespect/

In a post on his blog, Maher slammed Americans for "using their smarts on stupid stuff," and pointed out fans he thought were overreacting in the moments following Lee's passing.

"The guy who created Spider-Man and the Hulk has died, and America is in mourning," Maher wrote. "Deep, deep morning for a man who inspired millions to, I don’t know, watch a movie, I guess. Someone on Reddit posted, 'I'm so incredibly grateful I lived in a world that included Stan Lee.'"

"Personally, I’m grateful I lived in a world that included oxygen and trees, but to each his own. Now, I have nothing against comic books – I read them now and then when I was a kid and I was all out of Hardy Boys. But the assumption everyone had back then, both the adults and the kids, was that comics were for kids, and when you grew up you moved on to big-boy books without the pictures."

In typical Maher fashion, the personality continued his tirade against comic books, saying the industry is only succeeding because "dumb people got to be professors" as they wrote papers and theses about comic book characters.

"But then twenty years or so ago, something happened – adults decided they didn’t have to give up kid stuff," Maher ranted. "And so they pretended comic books were actually sophisticated literature. And because America has over 4,500 colleges – which means we need more professors than we have smart people – some dumb people got to be professors by writing theses with titles like Otherness and Heterodoxy in the Silver Surfer."

[–] TimMC (9143) 5 years ago

Bill Maher is an idiot.

[–] liscarkat (18589) 4 years ago

I'm usually not a Maher fan but he hit it out of the park with this one. I'm not saying I never liked comic books; I loved them and spent a lot of my allowance on them for years. Then I turned fourteen. "Big boy books without the pictures" used to be the norm for adults. Today's obsession with comic books by millions of physically grown-up men is an odd, yet not uninteresting phenomenon.

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

I agree with Bill Maher in principle, but what I dislike is how he went out his comments. It's not edgy to use a guy's death to bitch and moan about what kind of negative cultural impact he might have had. It's cowardly.

And it's pointless, too. I agree that comic books have contributed to the dumbing down of culture, which is why it was imperative for people like him to criticize them as this dumbing down is happening, not be a coward and wait until Stan Lee died and the damage is now done.