THE 20 BIGGEST CHANGES IN COMICS OVER THE LAST 40 YEARS

By Barry Dutter

I started reading comics in 1974 when I was nine years old, and I’ve read them continuously for the last 40 years. In that time, I’ve seen the comics industry go through some massive changes. Here are my observations on some of the biggest changes I‘ve observed as both a lifelong fan (and a sometime pro) over the past four decades.
1) THE PRICE. There’s no way to get around this one. Comics cost a quarter forty years ago. Now they cost $3.00 to $4.00 each.  That’s a huge increase, but books, magazines, and newspapers have all gone up at about the same rate. So really, the price of comics has risen consistently with other forms of print media. Although comics now have on average 5 more story pages than they did in 1974, (22 now vs. 17 then), the fact of the matter is that the average comic can still be read in 10 minutes or less. Does a ten-minute read actually deliver $3.00 to $4.00 worth of entertainment? As a crusty old curmudgeon, I say no!
2) TPB FEVER: The TPB mentality has taken over the industry. Back in my day, it was possible for a writer to do a one-part or two-part story. Those days are mostly gone. There is now an industry-wide obsession with making every story a five or six-part epic, so that it can neatly be collected in book form. The end result of this is that stories that might have once run for one or two issues are now stretched out to 5 or 6 parts, just to fill the pages of the eventual TPB reprint. When Marvel and DC first started coming out with TPBs the idea was to only reprint the best of the best, the most memorable stories. These days, they just reprint everything.
3) EVERY COVER IS NOW A PIN-UP: Some time around the 1980s, as Marvel and DC started to get into more and more into different venues of merchandising, there came a change in the covers of all their comics. In the 1960s and 70s, the cover generally represented a scene from inside the comic. These days, most of the covers feature generic pin-up shots that can be easily re-purposed for use as t-shirts, beach towels, posters, prints, and other memorabilia. The most egregious example of this came when Marvel launched their Ultimate Comics line in  2000. Look at the first 20 or 30 covers to ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN. Each cover features a generic pose of Spidey in action. The covers are all so similar, it led to me buying multiple copies of some issues, not sure if I had already read them or not. This never happened in the 1970s, where every cover was unique and got you excited about the story. 
4) THE MOVIE-IZATION OF COMICS: Comics are not movies and movies are not comics. This seems like a no-brainer. Yet somewhere along the mid-1990s, people who work in the industry started applying “Movie rules” to comics. Thus, thought balloons, captions and footnotes disappeared from comics. Movies generally do not show what characters are “thinking” and do not have many captions. Thus, the thinking seemed to be, if comics eliminated those devices which had served the industry well for decades, then comics could be as popular as movies. Personally I feel it was a mistake for the industry to abandon

these useful storytelling tools, but I guess that makes me a dinosaur. The worst example of “comics as movies” came when Marvel and DC started releasing “Director’s Cuts” of their comics. This is ridiculous, because comics do not have directors. This is the kind of thing that makes comics look like the jealous baby brother of movies.
5) CHARACTERS WITH VAGUE/ UNDEFINED POWERS: Back in my day, you could usually  tell what a hero or villain’s powers were just by looking at them. Iceman -- he shoots out ice. The Human Torch -- he catches on fire. Etc. By the mid-1980s, most of the best powers had been taken. By the time we got to the 1990s, there were so many new characters being introduced that there were not enough powers to go around. This resulted in a wave of characters that seem to have abilities that are just mix-and-match variations of powers that other heroes already have. To this day, I still can’t tell you what Cable does, or Bishop, or Deadpool, and what it is about these heroes that makes them different from other heroes who have come before. (Exactly what is the difference between Darkhawk and Iron Man?)
6) CHARACTERS WITH HIDDEN ORIGINS: Wolverine debuted in 1974, and he was one of the first major heroes to not have his origin revealed right away. As time went on, creators picked up on the idea that the less we knew about Wolverine, the more interesting he became. This led to a new wave of heroes being introduced with mysterious origins. This gave overworked writers an excuse to prolong the origin reveal for as long as possible. It took about 30 years for readers to finally find out the truth about Wolverine. Before Wolvie, characters would often appear for the first time on page one and reveal their entire origin in a flashback on page two!
7) ALL-BAT, ALL-SPIDER, ALL THE TIME:  Back in the 1970s, Marvel and DC introduced hundreds of new characters and concepts. You never knew what would sell, so they just threw everything at the wall to see what would stick. Omega the Unknown. Nova. Prez. The New Gods. The Eternals. Kamandi -- the Last Boy on Earth. Howard the Duck. Deathlok. Killraven. Man-Thing. Bloodstone. Starfire. All of there were characters that were introduced in the 70s. Some of them caught on. Most didn’t. But it was fun seeing what the Big Two would come up with next. These days, Marvel and DC are looking at the bottom line, and realizing that it’s better for them to launch yet another book starring the Avengers, Batman, Spider-Man or Superman than it is to launch an unproven concept. In the future, it seems we will see Marvel and DC taking far less chances on new concepts. From an economic standpoint, it makes far more sense to launch a seventh monthly Superman book or an 8th monthly Avengers book than it does to take a chance on something new. This is why I consider myself very lucky to have grown up reading comics in the 1970s, arguably the most diverse decade for comics ever.
8) NO MORE COMICS IN 7-11’s: Perhaps one of the biggest changes to happen over the last 40 years is that comics can no longer be found in 7-11’s and stationary stores. They have moved almost exclusively to book stores and comic book stores. This means it is now virtually impossible for a kid to wander into the local candy store and stumble upon a rack of comics, as I did that fateful day back in 1974.
In all likelihood, the next generation of comic readers will discover them in a  different way, such as on the Internet -- another thing that basically didn’t exist 40 years ago.
9) COMICS AS INTELLECTUAL PROPERTIES: In the 1970s, Marvel had a super-team book called THE CHAMPIONS. It only lasted for 18 issues, then it was cancelled. A few years later, another company came along and started up their own comic called CHAMPIONS. Apparently Marvel had failed to hold on to the trademark for that name, so it was up for grabs. As a result, Marvel lost the rights to ever again publish a comic called THE CHAMPIONS. Lesson learned. After that, Marvel

made sure they would never again let the copyright lapse on any character. A good example:  In 1981, Marvel published a graphic novel called THE DEATH OF CAPTAIN MARVEL. It was shocking for its time: the tragic end of a beloved hero who had been around since the Silver Age. Loyal readers were stunned that Marvel would never again have a hero called Captain Marvel. How naïve we were!  You see, Captain Marvel is not just a  super-hero. He’s also an Intellectual Property owned by the Marvel Entertainment Group. And if Marvel stops publishing stories about him, they could lose the rights to that name, too. This is why we have seen at least 3 other heroes at Marvel calling themselves “Captain Marvel” since the passing of the Kree warrior. None of them have been particularly successful, but that’s irrelevant. Marvel can keep trying till they get it right. It’s pretty clear that here will always be a character named “Captain Marvel” at Marvel.

10) SUPER-HEROES TAKE OVER HOLLYWOOD: In the 1970s, there was basically one super-hero who made it to the big screen: Superman, in a movie many regard as one of the best super-hero films ever made. There were several heroes on the small screen in that decade (Hulk, Spider-Man, Shazam, Isis), but all of them were hampered by low budgets and woefully crude special effects. These days, there are a dozen or more big budget super-hero movies released every year, and they are usually among the highest-grossing movies every year. Now that special effects have finally caught up to what comics have been doing for over 50

years, Hollywood can finally make super-hero movies exactly the way fans want to see them. The weird part about all this is that now, far more people are enjoying super-heroes in movie theaters than they are in comic books. The best-selling comics in the industry sell around 100,000 copies. But the AVENGERS movie took in over a billion dollars worldwide. Just think if every person who went to see the AVENGERS movie actually bought a comic book…
11) COMICS BRUISE MORE EASILY NOW: Takes a comic from the 1970s are 1980s. Run your finger along the spine. Chances are, it feels as smooth as the day it was published. Now run your finger along the spine of a  modern comic. Chances are, there are little dinks along the spine. You may feel some rippling along the left edge. Over the past few decades, there has been a  movement toward getting comics printed on thicker, heavier paper. While this new paper may look nicer, the fact is, it bruises much more easily. If you fail to protect it with a bag and board, odds are, it is going to acquire a few “battle scars.” To put it another way, when I was a kid, a comic could take a punch. The comics these days can not.

12) MANY OF THE BEST ARTISTS HAVE QUIT DRAWING COMICS: Some time over the past two decades, many of the best comics artists figured out they could make a pretty good living just by drawing covers. Comic artists get paid a lot more money for drawing covers than they do for drawing interior pages. Let’s say an artist gets paid $100 for drawing an interior page and $500 for drawing a cover. If you are an artist, you could draw one cover a week for 4 weeks and get paid $2,000 for the month.  Or you could draw 20 pages in a month for that same $2,000. Which would you rather do? I don’t blame artists for going for the higher-paying gigs, but I do miss seeing great artists like Adam Hughes, Art Adams, and J. Scott Campbell drawing interior pages. It seems like once an artist makes that move to drawing covers and commissions only, they rarely go back to doing any kind of graphic storytelling.

 13) AND SPEAKING OF COMMISSIONS…: Back in my day, you never heard of any artist making money on commissions. But these days, it seems that many comics artists derive a huge portion of their income from these gigs. Some long-time artists, like George Perez and John Byrne, seem to spend more time doing commissions than they do drawing for the major comics companies. I don’t fault artists for wanting a break from the grind of doing monthly books (especially after many decades), but the big issue I have with commissions is that most fans will never see so many great works by their favorite artists. I know that most artists try to post all their commissions online, but it’s not the same as their work being published nationwide for every fan to own a copy of.

14) REBOOTS: Reboot fever has gotten out of hand. It seems like once a year or so, all your favorite titles (especially at Marvel) are cancelled and then restarted with a  new number one and a new creative team. Starting a long-running series over again with number one has long been a blatant attention-getting ploy in comics. The crazy thing is, it still works, and it has reached epidemic proportions. In the last five years, I swear there must have been

at least 12 different comics called AVENGERS #1.
15) LOWER SALES, HIGHER PROFITS: Comic sales are down significantly from their 90s peak, but the prices are now so high, publishers are still making a ton of money. In 1980, AMAZING SPIDER-MAN was selling about 300,000 copies per month at 50 cents per copy. This meant that Marvel was bringing in a gross profit of about $150,000 per issue. These days, AMAZING (now called SUPERIOR) SPIDER-MAN sells about 100,000 copies a month at $4.00 per copy, for a gross  profit of $400,000 per month. You don’t have to be a math whiz to see that the company is making far more money selling a lot less copies than they used to. 

16) THE POINTLESS NUMBERING SYSTEM: From the 60s to the 80s, comic-book numbering was very simple, very basic -- straight and sequential. In the 90s, Marvel and DC started introducing the occasional oddball numbers, like “Alpha,” “Omega,” and “Infinity” issues, as well as months of zero and ½ issues. Then in the 2000s, both companies embraced the “decimal point” system of numbering, which have now made it difficult, if not impossible, for anyone to keep their comics organized in any kind of order. Both companies randomly throw in .01, .02, .03 numbers whenever they feel like it. Personally I think “decimal point” numbering is the dumbest idea to come along in the last 40 years, but the issues seem to sell well, so it looks like nonsensical issue numbers are here to stay.

17) VARIETY IS DEAD: Back in the 70s, Marvel and DC used to publish a wide variety of comics: westerns, war, romance, humor, horror. But these days, it’s pretty much all super-heroes. Sure, DC does some horror stuff with their Vertigo line, and Marvel occasionally strays into crime, sci-fi or romance, but for the most part, if you are going to buy a  Marvel or DC Comic, chances are, it’s going to have a super-hero in it. By the end of the 1970s, both companies realized what they did best, and they stuck with it. These days, if you want to find true diversity in comics, you hgave to look ti image and other indie publishers. 

18)  DEATH IS HOT: Back on my day, you never heard of a major Marvel or DC hero dying at the peak of their popularity. These days, it seems to happen almost once a  month. After the death and return of Superman proved to be a huge success in the 90s, just about every major super-hero has died and come back (Batman, Robin, Captain America, Human Torch, etc.) Some, more than once!(And some, like Ultimate Spider-Man and Batman's son, Damian, died and didn't come back!)
19) MORE GIRLS READING COMICS: Hard to believe, but true! There seem to be more girls reading (and enjoying) comics than ever before. I never thought it would happen, but it is a very positive trend. (And it certainly makes Comic Cons a lot more fun! We never had sexy Cos-players like that when I was a kid!)

20) THE INTERNET CHANGES EVERYTHING: The rise of the Internet has had a devastating effect on the publishing industry. Many newspapers and magazines have gone out of business because they failed to keep up with what was happening online. And comics have been affected too. Many have predicted that the Internet would finally be the thing that kills comics. After all, why would anybody want to own a “floppy” comic when they could own a digital copy, which is so much easier to store? Fortunately, there are still enough living pack rats out there that it still makes sense for publishers to continue to release print versions of their comics -- for now.
As the generation of fans that grew up in the 60s, 70s and 80s gradually dies off, who knows what will become of print comics?  It’s possible that young people will embrace the print versions of comics, just as they have embraced vinyl records.
The naysayers said TV would kill comics in the 1950s. They said  video games would kill comics in the 80s. Now they are saying the Internet will do it in the 2000s.

But that doesn’t seem likely. The medium has proven surprisingly resilient. Comics have faced some overwhelming challenges in the past, and overcome them all. As long as people have a love for the graphic storytelling medium, it looks like comics are here to stay!
It will be fun seeing what they look like 40 years from now. I will be in my 80s then, and hopefully, still reading comics! I figure, it’s worked for me this long, why stop now?