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!