Fascism isn’t “political commentary” to me. It’s in another sphere.
Is this an “Everyone does it” thing?
One of the first books to be marketed as a “graphic novel” was the trade paperback collection of the twelve issues of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen. It’s a marketing term that means “serious comic book.” Maus itself was first serialized in the magazine Raw.
There is, in fairness, a distinction, in that a single issue, one-shot comic would not be called a graphic novel. But it’s not a distinction that’s relevant to the question of comic books as serious art, or one that warrants considering Maus as something other than a comic book. All graphic novels are comic books, even if not all comic books are graphic novels.
I’m not sure what part of the post you’re referring to - elaborate, please.
I’m not aware of Maher espousing fascism
I’m with you there. He can be fantastic at times, and he can be a real ass, too. As he gets older, he gets a lot more cranky and less likable. Don’t get me wrong-- I like the guy. But he gets a bit less likable each year. I assume that his comment about “twenty years ago…” is referring to the rise of Graphic Novels. I can’t say I’m familiar with the genre at all, but on the surface they seem like glorified comic books.
BTW, he and I are almost exactly the same age. 
It’s a good quote, but referencing it has always struck me as a defense of enjoying childish things. A hypothetical person described by the quote wouldn’t need to defend themselves about enjoying childish things because they simply wouldn’t care about such a criticism. They would likely respond more along the lines of “Isn’t it awesome?”
(I remember a Far Side comic or something similar where a grown-up has filled their apartment with balls like in a ball pit, and when called out about it being childish, they respond “Isn’t it awesome?” I couldn’t find it with google, but I did find a related article about Simon Pegg.)
As far as Bill Maher’s point, agreed that it was poorly worded and poorly times. Simon Pegg said something similar back in 2015, and reading his words now I can sort of see how a dumbing down of society in general could lead to the Trump era.
Not to say I completely agree with Maher (and Pegg), but I understand the point they’re trying to make.
Fair enough. I cede to your greater knowledge of the subject matter.
XKCD: xkcd: Grownups
I think Maher’s attempt to link Stan Lee and the comic book industry with the rise of Donald Trump to be very tenuous. One of the biggest backers of Trump have been the Christian conservative movement and they have never been fans of the comic book industry. In fact, I’ve heard at some conservatives claim that the entire idea of “superheroes” is blasphemous. So at least in that regard I think Maher is entirely full of crap.
More accurately…it’s a fan and marketing term that sometimes means ‘serious comic book’.
It’s also a fan and marketing term that sometimes means ‘a long form (serialized or otherwise) comic book with a distinct beginning, middle, and end’. And a fan and marketing term that sometimes means ‘a comic book presented in a single volume significantly longer than a standard monthly* issue (even if it’s not a single coherent work, or was originally serialized in SMIs)’. And a fan and marketing term that sometimes means ‘a comic book that I (and/or you, to whom I am trying to sell it) am far too grown up to call a comic book’.
- Or weekly, twice monthly, bimonthly or quarterly.
Of course, no matter which definition is being used, titles like Maus, Watchmen, or A Contract with God (probably the first title to use the term Graphic Novel in its marketing, though not the first one called such) will almost always be called graphic novels, because they meet every one of them. They are serious, long form stories with distinct beginnings, middles, and ends, that anyone who’s talking about them would want to avoid the juvenile connotations some people (such as Maher) attach to the term ‘comic book’, and, while Maus and Watchmen were initially serialized, the collected editions were basically inevitable, even back when they were new (due to being serious, long form stories with distinct beginnings, middles, and ends).
Here is an article (on the “graphic novel” issue) that is coincidentally from two years ago yesterday. (I should have searched sooner!)
All I can imagine it’s he’s desperate for attention. Time and place, and that wasnt it.
Well, like, megadittoes.
This latest dumbness from “I’m not into Western medicine” Maher pales before his previous stupidities, like his antivax nonsense.
In that respect, he’s very much like Trump.
It’s not an “opinion”; it’s an assertion of alleged fact, as you yourself note (“I have no idea if adults have indeed done this”). One is entitled to one’s own opinions, but not to one’s own facts.
An additional level of stupidity (not that any more are needed) in Maher’s flatulence is that distinctions between media (comic books, movies, literature, visual art, etc) and refinement (sophisticated, middlebrow, lowest-common-denominator, etc) are orthogonal to one another. The “criticism” is logically equivalent to “And so they pretended that a triangle can be made of wood” or “And so they pretended that stucco can be green”.
Do graphic novels have ads for spud guns, joy buzzers and x-ray specs in the back?
To be clear, I meant his opinion about whether or not comic books are sophisticated literature.
Of course not. That would seem to be a bit, well, comical. 
But given that Maher did not mention graphic novels specifically, and that this whole thing was in the context of Stan Lee dying, isn’t it possible that Maher wasn’t talking about them at all, and thus it isn’t fair to bring them up in an attempt to criticize him in this way?
Well, then, I already answered that question in my previous comment – the opinion is simply nonsensical, since it treats two fundamentally orthogonal concepts (medium and quality) as if they were measured on the same scale.
Eh… gonna disagree on that one.