Those Juvenile Super-Heroes

 I recently started listening to comedian Bill Maher's audio book What This Comedian Said Will Shock You. I'm not a huge fan of Maher, but his essays do get me to think. Sometimes I agree with him, sometimes I very much do not, and quite often I laugh out loud. (For you young people, that's what LOL stands for.)

But what I'm going to discuss today relates to a little missive from Maher where he calls out adults for believing super-hero comics are great literature instead of the juvenile entertainment they really are. Now, I've been reading comic books for almost all my life. I still read comics, including super-hero comics. I still enjoy them. And I enjoy watching many of the movies and TV shows based on these characters. So I will take a bit of time to defend super-heroes. I will not, however, claim that the mainstream super-hero comics are anything other than juvenile entertainment. There are plenty of comics, in plenty of genres, that are definitely adult.  This includes super-hero books such as Watchmen that cannot be confused for kids books. But I will concede that most super-hero book are not serious, adult stories. It ain't Shakespeare to put it another way.

 

And you know what? I don't care! I KNOW these comics aren't serious and adult. I know who they are intended for, the audience they are trying to attract. And that's part of the charm. There are a lot of "juvenile" level books and series I read. I read Harry Potter as an adult, and you know what? I loved it! In fact, often the lack of serious adults stuff, such as excessive sex and violence, makes the books for young reader better, in my opinion. I've often said I've read Game of Thrones and Ranger's Apprentice, and Ranger's Apprentice is a better series. John Flanagan tells and great story and does it by creating great characters a reader cares about without getting bogged down in dirty details. (And the stories actually have endings, which is a plus!)

Maybe there's a generational difference between Boomers like Bill and the generations that followed. Something I learned from reading Jean Twenge's book Generations (the real differences between gen z, Millennials, ...) is that my generation kinda grew up fast. That is, we were often left to take care of ourselves while our parents worked 5 jobs so they could afford to keep the thermostat at 65 degrees. We also have held on to our childhood longer than previous generations. Maybe we're trying to still live that childhood we were partially cheated out of. Or maybe we just want some fun in our lives among all the chaos of our world.

 But I would be remiss to not mention one of the reasons I think super-hero comics, especially Marvel comics, have translated into other media and become so popular to such a large group. And that reason is the characters that are in these stories are so relatable to fans. They have been around for decades and we still "get" them, more than ever perhaps. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and all the rest really did a great job putting together stories about people who had neat powers and struggled through realistic troubles and we get them.

Somehow my point is that anything that you can read or watch or listen to that provides you with some kind of entertainment is worth it. It can be sophisticated and adult or funny or targeted at any age or group at all. You just have to like it. It makes you laugh, it makes you think, it makes you cry, or whatever. Just enjoy! No matter what some old "OK, Boomer" guy thinks!

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons drawing

 In recent years I've been drawing people in triads, but I had to make an exception for this group. I've been thinking about doing a drawing like this for a while. I think there are still fans who remember this party.

Review: Lies My Teacher Told Me

Being as I’m a teacher, it may come as a surprise that my favorite book I read in 2024 was Lies My Teacher Told Me. But the point of the book isn’t to bash teachers, but rather to criticize the way we teach history in American schools.

 

Specifically I read the graphic adaptation done by Nate Powell (adaptation and art) from the original book published in the 90s by James. W. Loewen. James worked with Nate to help update his original text until his death in 2021. I know James would be proud of the finished product and the success of the book.

But specifically, what is so good about this book? The answer is that it challenges the traditional ways that we teach children about the United States of America. Specifically, that we sugar-coat everything, making the good ol’ USA look great in all respects and everyone else looks inferior. I don’t think patriotism is a bad thing to have, but I also think we should acknowledge the mistakes our country made in the past, and not gloss over them pretending they did not happen.

Take the case of Christopher Columbus. I’ve been irked for quite awhile at how Americans make him such a big hero. He didn’t discover anything. He never set foot on the land that is now our country. He did not prove the Earth was round. He wasn’t particularly smart or brave. He just took advantage of people less technologically advanced than he was. The existence of the American continents was eventually going to be revealed to the Europeans. Columbus should get only the credit he deserves for opening up the trade route.

I won’t go into specifics about the other chapters and my thoughts, but let me say there’s a lot to consider. We need to get more in-depth with our education, especially of High-Schoolers, so they can understand our history better, and therefore understand our present better. We need to tackle the important even if controversial topics such as Vietnam and Black Lives Matter. My personal thought was about the use of nuclear weapons to end World War II. We need students to understand the reasons and controversy for the reasons that Truman decided to use the bombs. Maybe our students won’t agree with our views or each others’ views. That’s okay. But at least they will be informed about the history of the situation.

As to the book itself, Nate’s art is superb, the storytelling is clear and interesting, and the writing is insightful and easy to understand. This book gets my highest recommendation. And apparently it is being read, because it sold out at SPACE last year! (I ordered my copy from Amazon.)

I liked this so much I’m currently reading James Loewen’s sequel, Lies Across America. It’s about monuments.

Robots number three

 The final installment in my robots series is machines creating art, which is a rather controversial topic today. I don't want to write an essay about the subject, but I will say art is definitely something where machines cannot replace human creativity.

Robots number two

 The whole point of sports is to see how much is humanly possible. Replacing athletes with robots destroys the point.