Ripping The Capes You've Sewn: Bill Maher's Scapegoating of Comics and Their Fans / R. W. Watkins

Ripping the Capes You’ve Sewn:

Bill Maher’s Scapegoating of Comics and Their Fans

R. W. Watkins

Surprisingly enough, I must concede that Bill Maher actually makes some very good points in his little blog-smear of an essay, ‘Adulting’.

I agree that often too much is made of celebrity deaths (and lives) nowadays. Writers, actors, athletes and (certainly) singer-musicians who are departed or elderly are often spoken of in hushed or ecstatic tones as if they were super-human or godlike in stature. This can be particularly perplexing to an objective observer when the celebrity in question has actually done very little to nothing to benefit humanity on a political or socioeconomic level. To put it bluntly, I’m not sure how others feel, but I value my own life as much as that of Bert Reynolds, Gordie Howe or Bob Dylan. Or Stan Lee.

I also agree that comic books were targeted primarily at children and teenagers in pre-1990s North America, and that the targets—for whatever reasons—have definitely shifted as Generations X and Y have aged over the past three decades. Maher is by no means alone in his assertion that the targets and demographics have changed. Many longtime readers and comics creators alike have bemoaned the fact that comic books are aimed least of all at ‘kids’ these days. Personally, I think that a few well-written, well-drawn superhero and funny-animal titles printed on newsprint and affordably priced would go a long way in assuring that the youth of today have access to a medium, and thereby the opportunity to cultivate an interest in creating their own comics and, ideally, become the celebrated cartoonists of tomorrow.

Young boy at the comics rack, 1950s – when comics were still aimed primarily at children

And yes, I certainly agree that prolonged adolescence and even prolonged childhood are increasingly a reality, annoying as what it may be to the (supposedly) well-adjusted amongst us. In fact, I think the problem is far more serious than what Maher dares to let on, and began much earlier than the “twenty years or so ago” that he reckons when referencing the (alleged) undermining of American universities by people borne to professordom on the strength of comics-themed theses. ‘Overgrown children’ and under-developed adults were already becoming commonplace as far back as the 1980s, when most of us Gen-X’ers were still in high school or post-secondary. Bill Maher might be astounded at just how many of us post-Baby Boomers never learnt how to drive, sew or swim first or last—and couldn’t care less decades later.

What Maher conveniently fails to provide us is the root cause(s) of the younger generations’ shortcomings. Any damn fool can point one’s finger at the symptoms; it takes a serious and more courageous social critic to go delving into the causes (and possibly recommend a cure). Curiously, Maher makes no mention of the clinical ‘fun-free’ school zones, mandatory helmets, and higher legal ages that have been implemented over the past quarter century – all invariably stifling and conducive to delayed adulthood, and all inflicted upon Generations X, Y and Zed by elements within Maher’s own Baby Boom generation. I always find it interesting and rather telling when someone avoids taking responsibility for social problems by bypassing the root causes; choosing instead to attack the repercussions of the problems that he or his kind actually instigated in the first place. (I’m reminded of John Barton’s and Carmine Starnino’s actions in the world of Canadian poetry.) In short, methinks the blogger doth protest too much.

North American youth – before Baby Boomers decided they shouldn’t have fun or grow up

It’s interesting that Maher also fails to mention any of the other aspects of popular culture that might be construed as childish in the hands of adults, and concentrates solely on comic books. I understand, of course, that the main focus of his blog post was, after all, the death of Stan Lee, the face and voice of mainstream superhero comics over the past fifty-five years. But one would think it only reasonable that Maher would at least note in passing the popularity of video gaming, D&D role-playing, texting, social media, ‘monster trucks’, body modification and even conversing in Klingon amongst people in their thirties and forties. It appears that Maher has a particular bias against the comics medium in general, as well as animation – I recall him, in the days of Politically Incorrect, dismissing “cartoons” after a guest suggested he watch The Simpsons. His association of comics and the cartoon style with American immaturity is actually comparable to the Italian Communist Party’s criticism of Peanuts in the 1960s; i.e., that it was representative of “a certain alienated America, always 12 years old, which does not know itself and does not realize it is the heir of a great history and a great culture: that America which yet has not discovered America” (as quoted in Charlie Brown & Charlie Schulz, Lee Mendelson in association with Charles Schulz; The World Publishing Company, 1970).

A graduate of Cornell University, where he double majored in English Literature and History, maybe Maher has been conditioned to arbitrarily see comics as an affront to the hallowed halls of academia. If so, then I must confess to being a little confused, for surely the comics form can be no more of an affront to higher learning than on-air conversations with Gilbert Gottfried and occasional visits to the Playboy Mansion. I should also point out that Maher’s dogmatic hatred of comics seems to have left his mind’s eye stranded in the American drugstore comic racks of the mid 1960s, for he appears to possess no knowledge of foreign, adult or ‘alternative’ comics, from Moebius to R. Crumb to the Fantagraphics titles of the 1980s and onwards. Dismissing the Silver Surfer and the Incredible Hulk is one thing, but snubbing Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus—for whatever reasons—should strike one as headshakingly careless.

In his comparative reference to the 1940s, Maher seems to be suggesting what a lot of us have been thinking for some time now: that Americans—like most of the other English-speaking peoples—are technologically brighter and generally better educated today than what they were half a century or more ago, but substantially less cultured in their leisure activities. No-one in his or her right mind would suggest that watching Keeping Up with the Kardashians and playing Pokémon Go are in the same category with taking in an Andrew Wyeth exhibition or a Dave Brubeck recital (or even a Carmen Miranda musical!). But again Maher doesn’t expound or specify when he says Americans are “using [their] smarts on stupid stuff”, and the reader is left to equate “stupid stuff” with comic books alone.

As for his closing suggestion that “Donald Trump could only get elected in a country that thinks comic books are important”, I would dismiss such a petty, loaded statement as a mere exercise in sensationalism—somewhere between a red herring and an invisible elephant. I think a more accurate proposition would be that a Donald Trump could get elected in any country in which the empty, egomaniacal stars of ‘reality’ television are followed religiously and revered; the population, in the name of health and safety, is discouraged from growing up; and the political commentators prefer to focus on the fans of a 95-year-old dead comic-book writer rather than new North Korean weapons claims or developments in the Jamal Khashoggi murder case being reported that same week.

Maybe Bill Maher feels helpless in an age of perpetual pubescence in the United States of Trump. Maybe he’s ambivalent about the youth that he’s lost or never even experienced—comic books and all. Whatever the reasons, at the end of the day, Maher can’t seem to transcend that image of the fading, arrogant Baby Boomer who takes comfort in ridiculing the younger generations—all the while refusing to accept any of the blame for the hole into which that ever-growing segment of the population has dropped. I guess, at least for some people, anything’s better than taking responsibility for a situation in a world that’s increasingly not your stage.

‘Mr. Sideburns’ in his 1974 yearbook photo