CUTTING THE CORD ON CABLE

By Barry Dutter

It finally happened. After more than 30 years, I cut the cord on cable.
It was not an easy decision to make. I am strongly resistant to new technology. Yet when Time Warner made their latest rate hike (from $95 a month to a whopping $126 a month -- with no movie channels and no additional services, I might add), I knew it was time to explore other options.
My decision was made easier when I stepped out on to my balcony one day and noticed that every single one of my neighbors had a satellite dish. My neighbors are not wealthy people. They are regular working stiffs, struggling to pay their bills. The fact that they all had satellite told me one thing: it had to be cheaper than cable.
I made two phone calls. The first was to Time Warner, to complain about their skyrocketing prices and to see if they were willing to offer me a better deal. The customer service rep on the phone offered to lower my monthly rate to $110. Still too high. I told him I would call Direct TV and see if they had a  better offer.
Sure enough, Direct TV had a much better offer -- 50 bucks a month, for essentially the exact same service offered by Time Warner. I was sold. I instantly made the appointment for them to come hook up my satellite. They came three days later. And just like that, my TV was no longer wired for cable.
After that, I made one more phone call, to let Time Warmer know my business with them was done. At this point, they made a last, desperate attempt to keep my business -- they offered to knock my monthly rate down to $92 for both cable and Internet -- which was actually a great deal. It would have been my lowest cable rate in years -- but it was too late.
I had already signed a contract with DirecTV. And now, for the first time in about 30 years, I do not have a cable box attached to my TV.
I still remember the first time I ever watched cable. It was at my Aunt Mary’s house. My Aunt Mary and Uncle Jimmy were pretty well off. They were the first people I ever knew to have one of those large-screen projection TVs --you know, those early, primitive ones, where the picture only looked good from head-on. And they were the first people I ever knew to have cable TV.
This was in the mid-1970s. I remember every time we went over Aunt Mary’s house that summer, we would sit and watch cable -- mostly HBO. They kept showing the same THREE MUSKETEERS movie over and over again -- the one with Charlton Heston and Raquel Welch.
My cousin, Maria, used to refer to HBO as “Home Box,” seemingly not aware of the fact that the appeal of the channel was that is was like having a “Box Office” in your home, not just a “Box” in your home.
Back then, there were many places that did not have cable yet. You had to wait till it came to your town. I don’t remember exactly when we first got cable at my house -- it must have been in the late 1970s or the early 1980s.
But I do remember watching every new movie that came on HBO every week. Back in those days, HBO was only on 12 hours a day, not 24. It was a big deal when they first went to 24 hours.
And I remember when MTV first came out, to much fanfare. When it first debuted in 1981, MTV was not available on my cable system. When  it finally came, it became something of an obsession for my siblings and I. I remember watching the new Bruce Springsteen of Michael Jackson videos, while my Dad just stared at the TV uncomprehendingly and asking, “Can’t we just watch Magnum PI?”
And I remember the Showtime Wednesday Night movie. It was my brother, Brian, who first pointed out to me that Showtime would show a soft-core porn movie every Wednesday night. We were horny high school kids at the time, and those movies, with titles such as Sex on the Run, She’s 19 and Ready, and The Sensuous Nurse -- provided hours of entertainment.
When you consider that for most of the 1970s, the closest thing you got to a naked woman on TV was when Charlie’s Angels would jump up and down in a bikini, the Showtime Wednesday night movie was a breath of fresh air. The movies were fairly tame by today’s standards -- mostly you saw some boobs and butts, and they had strict rules about never showing any penetration  -- but for a couple of curious teens growing up in the pre-Internet Age, they were more than enough.
When I think back on my formative years, major credit must go to Linda Blair’s movies about women in prison for helping me get through puberty!
In the 1970s and 80s, when you subscribed to cable, you didn’t use a traditional remote control like you do today. They would give a you a box -- connected to your TV by a cable -- that you would set in your lap or in your chair as you flipped around the channels. Sometimes when you were bored, you would sit there pressing button after button on the cable box, desperate to find something to watch. We used to call this “playing piano.”
These days, there are so many other options besides cable -- Netflix, Hulu, Xbox, etc. -- many of which do the same things cable does, only better. You would think cable providers would do everything possible to keep costs down for their customers. The fact that they just raised their rates -- and this is before their merger with Comcast -- and that  they only offer you a great deal when you threaten to cancel their service -- tells me they need to rethink their business model -- and fast. 
We live in a time now where people are growing increasingly accustomed to getting free entertainment. It’s possible to download music and movies for free… you can even download most of the shows that air on pay channels like HBO…
The cable companies had a good run of 20 or 30 years where they had no real competition. But now there are just so many other options.
I am still willing to pay for monthly TV service at this time. I just signed a two-year contract with DirecTV. But after that time is up, I may even cut the cord on satellite.
Back in the 1980s, cable TV was almost a necessity. It provided  real alternative to network TV. If you wanted to watch channels other than the big 3, you pretty much had to subscribe to cable. You had no other option. It gave you access to dozens of other channels. But now there are others providing that same service, and most of them seem to do it cheaper.
In  time, I wouldn’t be surprised to see cable TV going the way of newspapers, magazines, DVDs and CDs. It was a product of its time, and for many years, it was the primary source of entertainment for millions of  people. But those days may be numbered.
Satellite is not perfect -- there are some apartment buildings that do not allow satellites, and others where the service won’t work at all. But it is only one of the many alternatives to cable that are available.
A few years back, I canceled my home phone account, as I no longer needed it with the rise of cell phones. I later canceled my newspaper subscriptions, as I can now read them online for free. And now, I have walked away from cable TV, something that has been part of my life since at least 1975. (That’s about 40 years, for those of you scoring at home!)
I never thought I would give up cable, but if I can do it, anyone can. And if I still want to see Linda Blair in prison, those movies are easier than  ever to find online -- and I don't have to wait till Wednesday night at 10:00 P.M.!

"THE WOLF OF WALL STREET"  REVIEW

By Barry Dutter

THE WOLF OF WALL STREET is about as close as we’re ever going to get to a sequel to GOODFELLAS.  It is no accident that WOLF OF WALL STREET tries as hard as it can to recreate the look, feel and tone of that 1991 gangster film. GOODFELLAS was Scorcese’s last truly great movie. It was easily the best movie of the 90s.
And its story of a cocky bad boy who is willing to do whatever it takes to get rich, and doesn’t care who he hurts along the way, is strongly echoed in THE WOLF OF WALL STREET.
LEONARDO DiCAPRIO seems to be doing his  best impression of RAY LIOTTA, the star of GOODFELLAS, even down to the way he talks directly to the camera. (Even his hairstyle is the same!) Both films involve an unrepentant womanizer who starts out with a  cute, supportive wife but then moves on to a younger, hotter bad girl who seems to never really love him.
Both films have the lead character partying hard and doing copious amounts of drugs on their road to taking advantage of innocent people and making as much money as humanly possible. I guess the main difference is that the characters in GOODFELLAS are somehow more charming, more likable. They may be hoodlums who will slit your throat if you don’t pay them on time, but they will do it with style.

GOODFELLAS was all about living “the life” and not being a regular working-class schmuck. The "life" involved going to the nicest restaurants, having front show seats to the hottest shows in town, drinking and drugging all night, etc. THE WOLF OF WALL STREET  takes “the life” to the next level, with 175-foot yachts, huge mansions, and vacation homes in spots so exotic, they can only be described by Robin Leach.
The characters in THE WOLF OF WALL STREET are not murderers or robbers. Somehow, they are even worse, because they  steal your money while pretending to help you make money. At least the guys in GODFELLAS hold a gun to your face when they rob you!
In both films, the main character gets off easy. In GOODFELLAS, Henry Hill rats out his fellow gangsters so he doesn’t have to serve any time in jail. In THE WOLF OF WALL STREET, Jordan Belfort ends up serving 22 months of a three-year sentence. A quick search of Wikipedia reveals that he never paid back the $160 million in restitution he was ordered to pay his victims. He still works as a highly-paid motivational speaker.
I have to admit, I was really disappointed to learn that Belfort never really paid for his crimes. I spent three hours watching a guy commit some of the worst sins imaginable, living this decadent life, feeling secure that his downfall was inevitable, and that he would surely get what was coming to him in the end.
Instead, he gets off with a slap on the wrist. Okay, so he can never work as a stockbroker again. Big deal. He writes two best-selling novels about his crimes, and makes a ton of money as a motivational speaker today. (He even has a cameo in the friggin’ movie, for God's sake!)

The lack of punishment left me with mixed feelings about the film. In GOODFELLAS, when Henry Hill gave up his life of crime and left that world behind (seemingly) forever, it was a huge deal. Spending the rest of his life living like a schmuck in witness protection meant he could never live the high life again. That was a devastating blow to him, even worse than a long prison sentence.
But Jordan Belfort is still making tons of money, and he is still free to live how he chooses. It’s almost like the message of THE WOLF OF WALL STREET is, “Do whatever it takes to make money. Rob, steal, cheat people. It doesn’t matter, because you will never have to face any real consequences.”
Setting aside those qualms, the movie is a fun ride. It’s three hours long, and unlike that other recent period “reality-based” crime drama, AMERICAN HUSTLE, it actually has enough story to sustain its length. Did THE WOLF OF WALL STREET need to be three hours? No. You could have cut an hour out of it and still kept all the important story points. Some scenes go on too long. There is a “comedy” sequence when Leonardo DiCaprio first tries explaining his new penny-stock business to his idiot friends, when they all get distracted and keep trying to change the topic. This scene could easily have been cut.
Another comedy scene where Leo and the boys discuss the finer points of dwarf-tossing, is mildly amusing,  but also would have been an easy cut. The most famous scene in GOODFELLAS, the "Do I amuse you?" scene, perhaps the single greatest movie scene of the 90s, was largely improvised by Joe Pesci. Some of these comedy scenes in TWOWS have the same "improvisatory" feel to them, but the difference is, none of the actors in the new movie has the same sense of danger that Pesci brought to his role.
THE WOLF OF WALL STREET has many scenes of Leo standing with a microphone in front of his employees, trying to rouse them with an inspirational speech. We kind of get the point the first time that that his speeches are great at rallying the troops. I can definitely see why this role would appeal to any actor -- DiCario seems to spend half the movie giving speeches to his underlings. (None of my bosses ever had a microphone in the office. Maybe I would have been more motivated if they had!)
DiCaprio brings a lot of enthusiasm to his role, (It should be noted that his role involves sniffing coke off of his wife's boobs and random hookers' butts!) and his performance carries the film. You may not like the character he plays, but you definitely want to know what he's going to do next.
As a filmmaker, Scorcese remains as vital as ever, but he seems to be repeating himself more, sometimes even within the same movie. (Look at THE AVIATOR, where the story seemed to consist of: Invent a plane, bed a starlet, invent another plane, bed another starlet.)
It’s interesting to note how many movies have a hot blonde as the object of unattainable perfection, just as Hitchcock did in his best movies so long ago. Scorcese went down that road before with a never-better Sharon Stone in CASINO, and WOLF OF WALL STREET continues that tradition with the stunning Margot Robbie, an actress who I had never seen before but she has apparently been busy for years working for film and TV both here and in her native Australia.
She is quite the knock-out. She looks great in her clothes, and let’s face it, out them. This film has more nudity in it than you would expect from a 71-year-old director.
And the language! 506 F-bombs, the new record for a major Hollywood movie! (It wasn’t until I got home later and checked that I realized that someone had actually counted.)
I, for one, can’t wait till THE WOLF OF WALL STREET comes to network TV. They will either have to cut out 2 hours of cursing, or find fun, new ways of dubbing over the F-word with less offensive words. It will be the greatest editing challenge of all time, and it will be a blast to see what they come up with!
The acting in THE WOLF OF WALL STREET is strong, for the most part. But I thought Jonah Hill laid it in a little thick. He was effective in a quieter role in MONEYBALL. Here, he might as well wear a sign that says, “I am a gay Jew!”
I am getting sick of Leonardo DiCaprio starring in every Scorcese movie. This Bromance needs to end. This is probably their best movie together, so it would be a great time to end their collaboration. (Maybe it’s time for Scorcese to make one last movie with Robert DiNero and Joe Pesci!)
Out of all the most acclaimed directors who came up in the 70s -- Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich, Brian Depalma -- Scorcese is the only one who still makes movies that matter.
It looks like WOLF OF WALL STREET will not be a huge hit for him, because a  lot of people are turned off by the subject matter. I can’t say I blame them. The film does glorify a contemptuous asshole who has no regard for all the people he hurts.
This movie takes place in the late 80s and early 90s, decades after the glamorous 60s and 70s era of GOODFELLAS.
The new movie makes you miss the days when if you didn’t like someone, you just whacked them. Everybody understood it was nothing personal. It was just business.
The characters in THE WOLF OF WALL STREET are engaged in different kind of business, it just feels a lot dirtier. 

MY BREAKING BAD REVIEW (MAJOR SPOILERS!)

By Barry Dutter

Over the past five years, I kept hearing that BREAKING BAD was the best show in the history of television. I figured that had to be an exaggeration. There was no way it could be that good -- could it?
Finally, after much badgering from the guys at work, I decided to give BREAKING BAD a try, aided by my new best friend, Netflix!

The show got off to a great start -- I watched the first 4 episodes in one night, which, for a guy with no attention span like myself, is a testament to the show‘s quality. Right from the start, BREAKING BAD had me hooked with gripping storytelling and intriguing characters.
The pace slowed down a bit in season two, as the show seemed to lose that sense of  “Oh my God, I can’t wait to see what happens next!”
But things picked up again with season three, when Gus Fring became a regular character on the show. Gus is one of TV’s all-time greatest villains and the tension between Walt and Gus made for powerful drama.
Gus Fring never lost his temper, never raised his voice, and seemed all the more dangerous because of it.
As soon as Gus arrived on the scene, you knew that he and Walt would have to have some kind of showdown. It ended the only way it could, with Gus dead and Walt looking for new business partners.
I found the demise of Gus Fring to be a bit of a letdown, for two reasons. 1) You never got to see Walt and Gus have one last face-off, and 2) This was where Walt took on the role of Master Planner, the guy who knows what everyone is going to do before they do it,  and can create whatever complicated weapons he needs to exact his revenge.
It’s great that Walt can rig an exploding wheelchair, but wasn’t this guy just an ordinary schoolteacher just a few months prior? I know he taught chemistry, but it just seemed a bit of a stretch.
(Likewise, in the finale, when Walt rigged the remote-control machine gun, again, credibility was pushed a bit far. In order for Walt’s plans to work, so many things had to go exactly his way: the bad guys had to all be standing in the right spot, Walt’s car had to be parked in the perfect spot, oh yeah, and the jerry-rigged gun had to actually work.)
Those were the moments when I thought BREAKING BAD was going a little too over the top.
For that matter, I’m still not clear how Walt ended up getting shot by one of his own bullets in the finale. I mean, he was the one holding the remote control, and he knew exactly when the gun was going off.
I know Walt had to die at the end, but it seems strange that writer/creator Vince Gilligan had Walt gunned down by his own weapon. I guess the best way to look at it is to say that it’s hard to write a great finale for a beloved show, and the ending of BREAKING BAD was a lot more satisfying than most.
All in all, the finale touched all the bases, wrapped up all the loose ends, and left viewers feeling pretty good, as opposed to the endings of shows like the THE SOPRANOS, which left viewers feeling unfulfilled, and LOST, which left them feeling like they had just wasted the last six years of their lives.
BREAKING BAD was the story of one man’s descent into pure evil, and the corruption of another man along the way. When the series begins, Jessie is a low-level drug dealer. But by the time the show has ended, Jessie has been tortured, beaten, enslaved, forced to kill on more than one occasion -- basically, ever since Walt met Jessie, Jessie’s life was one series of horrible events after another.
Yes, Jessie made a lot of money, but by the end of the fifth season, he was willing to give away all his money just to be free of Walt. When we see Jessie driving off into the night in the finale, we are led to believe that Jessie has been redeemed. Jessie refuses to kill Walt at the end when he has a chance; this seems to indicate that yes, Jessie was once willing to stoop to Walt’s level, but never again.
We don’t know where he will go when the show is over or what he will do to make money, but one thing is certain: Jessie will never cook meth again. The show’s 62 episodes really put Jessie through the ringer.
On the last episode of BREAKING BAD, Walter White summed up his criminal career by saying, “I did it for me. And I was good at it.”
But was he really good at it? Seems to me that the only part that he was good at was cooking meth. He was almost a total failure in every other aspect of the business. He made one bad decision after another, continually forming alliances with people who were either too unpredictable or too dangerous to get involved with, and the only reason he survived as long as he did was mostly through sheer dumb luck.
(Examples: The evil drug lord Tuco was killed by Hank, not by anything that Walt did. Walt was nearly executed by the twin hitmen, but was saved from a last-minute text by Gus Fring. Pure luck.)
For a smart guy, Walt could be pretty dumb, at times. When his RV died out in the desert, it was Jessie who had the idea of creating a make-shift battery. When Walt and his cronies needed to erase a video tape that was in police custody, it was Jessie who had the idea of using a giant magnet to erase the tape. Yes, it was Walt who would have to figure out ways to make these things work, but sometimes Walt indeed to be reminded by people dumber than him just how smart he was.
Was BREAKING BAD the best TV show of all time? I would say no, because it did drag a bit in season two, and the resolution was not perfect. The one episode about the housefly was by far one of the worst episodes of any TV show I have ever seen. I would call that one a bit of self-indulgence on the part of the writers. Also, there were some subplots that worked better than others. The bit about Marie being a kleptomaniac really went nowhere and didn‘t add anything to the show.
I still question whether or not the actor who played Walt’s brother-in-law was well-cast. He seemed to me he would be more at home in a sitcom than with the heavy-hitters on BREAKING BAD.
But BB did keep you on the edge of your seat, perhaps more than any TV show in history. I’ve never really been a fan of any TV drama. I’ve always enjoyed comedies more. At one point, I might have said that M*A*S*H was the best TV show ever. At another point, I might have said THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW or ALL IN THE FAMILY.
But BREAKING BAD did get me to watch an entire drama from beginning to end, and that was something I had never done before (and probably will never do again, because, let's face it, after BREAKING BAD, any other TV drama would be a letfdown.) In terms of the way it was structured, BB was really more like a novel than a TV show.
So I have to give the makers of the show kudos for that. Thanks, Vince Gilligan and Bryan Cranston, for making me care about a  TV drama and for keeping me guessing all the way to the end.
Much of the credit for the show’s success has to go to Cranston, who proved on MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE that he could he funny, but he really showed his depth here. After seeing him play a goofy sitcom dad for years, who would have suspected that he could go on to play one of TV’s all-time great dramatic roles?
No one ever knew that Malcolm’s dad could be so scary. To me, the only false moment bin the entire run of the show came when Walt confronted the bully who was picking on his son. I just didn't buy ity it. Otherwise, Cranston's performance was flawless.
Aaron Paul deserves equal credit for his raw portrayal of Jessie, whose character went through quite a gauntlet as well. Right from the start, Jessie never took any crap from anyone. He started out full of youthful anger -- no one on TV will ever say “Yo bitch!” with as much venom as Jessie could spit. But by the end of the show, Jessie was a hollow shell of his old self. He had lost his spark, but still, he was happy to be alive.
Equal praise must go to Bob Odenkirk, who brought much-needed humor to the show. His fast-talking character, Saul Goodman, really injected a shot in the arm to BREAKING BAD. I’ve been a fan of Odenkirk’s ever since the late, lamented BEN STILLER SHOW, and it was fun to see him show off his semi-dramatic chops here.
Really, most of the characters on BB were memorable, even supporting players like Mike the hatchet man. Badger. Jessie’s junkie girlfriend, Jane. The only one I really didn’t like on the show was Lydia, both because of the way she was written and the way the actress played her. She came across as indecisive, desperate and weak, where all the other criminals on the show were portrayed as strong and cunning.  Something about Lydia just annoyed me from the start. I get that she was a businesswoman who was out of her element, and understandably nervous, but the weak portrayal of her character fell flat. Maybe if a different actress had played her I might have liked the her more. (Penelope Cruz, maybe?)
As for Walt’s wife -- I was not as annoyed  by Skyler as most BB fans seemed to be. I thought actress Anna Gunn did a fine job, and in many ways, her character went through as many incarnations as Walt: loving wife, betrayed spouse, faithful co-conspirator, terrified victim.
Gunn expertly conveyed all of these incarnations and more. It’s got to be tough for a woman to see her husband turn into a criminal genius. But Skyler’s journey was every bit as fascinating s Walt’s.
The only misstep in the Skyler story was the resolution to the Skyler’s tax-cheating boss storyline. For several episodes, he is a major character. Then he accidentally trips and falls, bumps his head and becomes paralyzed. That’s it?
Seems like Walt should have had more of a hand in dealing with the end of that character.
When watching BB, sometimes you got the impression that even the writers didn’t know what was going to happen next. Most of the time, this worked to the show’s benefit. But occasionally, it resulted in storylines that just didn’t seem to resolve themselves in a satisfactory way.
Like I said, when you have a show this compelling, it’s hard to come up with an ending that will satisfy everyone. In the end, Walt made sure that all the money would be passed on to his son and he killed all his enemies before he died. He even freed Jessie, which was not his primary reason for entering Jack’s lair, but once he saw the opportunity, he jumped on it. And he left behind a family that would never be the same.
Walt’s wife will forever have to live with the horror of what she did as an accomplice to a master criminal. (Not to mention that she is stuck running a car wash that I’m sure she would rather not be in charge of.) Marie is left to mourn her late husband, Hank, whose death was surely the most shocking one on the show. (After all those years of brilliant detective work, to be gunned down so ignobly…surely Hank deserved a better fate. But then, BB never promised that everyone would have a happy ending.)
Walt Jr. will forever have to live with the fact that his father was a lying, murdering drug dealer. And Jessie will have to live with all the hell that he went through as he struggles to rebuild his life.
Walt’s final year on Earth was certainly an eventful one. In the end, it was not the cancer that killed Walt. It was his own ambition and his own regret at having missed out a big business opportunity the first time around.
Who among us can’t relate to Walter White? We’ve all had opportunities in our lives that we may have passed up on. We’ve all had regrets. The difference is, most of us don’t pursue a life of crime as a way to make up for past slights. That’s why it was so much fun to watch Walt on his journey. Through him, we got to live vicariously, as we watched him make moves we would never attempt in real life. We got to see him try to recapture all the things that had eluded him in life: Wealth. Power. Success.
On the last episode of BB, the show climaxed with a song by  Badfinger called “Baby Blue.”
I’ve always loved Badfinger but I was never a big fan of that song. Now, of course, I’ve developed  new appreciation for it, and I will never listen to it the same way again. The song, about  guy who didn’t treat his woman right, and paid the price -- does not completely sum up the show, but it sure as hell worked in the context of that episode.
As Walt lay there dying in a puddle of his own blood, and the we heard the opening line of the song, “I guess I got what I deserved…” it created an indelible image that ranks as one of TV’s all-time most memorable moments.
The song had a double meaning because BB was all about Walt’s own creation -- his “baby blue” -- the crystal blue meth.
It was the thing that saved him from an unbearably boring and unsatisfying life, and in the end, it was the thing that he ended up dying over.
The writers could have had Walt simply due from cancer. But that would not have pleased anyone. That would have been a cop-out ending for the show. That’s not how we wanted to see our Walter White go out.
In the end, he went out the only way he could -- he went out fighting. He was defiant to the end, and he died as the smartest guy in the room. (Even if he was dumb enough to get hit by his own bullet!)

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?