Bill Maher went on Larry King Now yesterday to clarify the comments he made about Stan Lee that have been getting him a lot of hate on the internet for the past few days. For context, the original quote that got people mad was written in a blog post on the website of his show, Real Time With Bill Maher:
The guy who created Spider-Man and the Hulk has died, and America is in mourning. Deep, deep mourning for a man who inspired millions to, I don’t know, watch a movie, I guess. 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.
Maher, who made a cameo in Iron Man 3, was then criticized by Stan Lee's (shady) company Pow!, who called his opinion "disgusting." Maher is known for these kind of inflammatory statements and he believes that the reaction to his opinion is proving his point for him:
I am agnostic on Stan Lee. I don't read comic books. I didn't even read them when I was a child. What I was saying is, a culture that thinks that comic books and comic book movies are profound meditations on the human condition is a dumb fucking culture. And for people to get mad at that just proves my point.