Where Have All My Heroes Gone?

So what happened to my heroes? Ever since the 70's the heroes have been getting darker and the villians haven't changed hardly at all. I know Batman started off kinid of dark for his era but he lightened up not long after that but in the 70's he started getting dark again. Soon after that Marvel started with the Punisher and Wolverine. Wolverine has killed people, usually off panel.

The Punisher used what he called mercy bullets when he shot someone. Now I never thought that those tupes of bullets existed except in the Marvel Universe. I did find out that they do exist in the real world. They are rubber bullets but if they strike a person in the right spot a rubbe bullet can kill as well as a metal one.
The Punisher started off kind of dark. He was hired by the Jackel, who he thought of as the good guy, to kill Spider-man. Of course he found out in time to team-up with Spidey to fight the Jackel. Take a look at the progression of how Frank Castle has changed through time.

Do you see how much worse he got. First he starts with Spider-Man in the crosshairs of his gun. Years later he looks like a mad man with bullets flying everywhere. In the last he looks like he is more calm but like he's Lee Harvey Oswald getting ready for a really big kill with all those guns behind him.
I use to like the Punisher as I bought in to the mercy bullet thing but now I'm glad he isn't published monthly.
In the 70's the comic books took on the occult. For years the occult has had many people interested. Comic book sales numbers were starting to dip but combing it with superheroes started to bring the sales up. Soon Batman started going back to his early roots and he started by taking on the occult.

Batman had an enemy/ally in Man-Bat and then for a time he even became a vampire. He even thought of killing some villians while in the heat of battle like his arch-enemy the Joker. That was something he refused to even think of before.
Marvel really jump in the occult band wagon early on when they created Dr. Strange a Master of the Mystic Arts. Later they made an anti-hero out of Dracula, changed Ghost Rider from a western hero to a man who sold his soul to Satan become a superhero and Jack Russell was a man struggling with a family curse that turned him into a Werewolf by Night. I point this posting at myself as well as others as I read and enjoyed them too but  these were signs that something was wrong in the comic book world. Things were getting worse and the patient was dying.

Gone were the days when heroes stood above the crowd and were something to look up to. Now they were part of the lowest common denomator. Now some heroes curse and some beleive that the means equal the ends.
Now every so often you do find a brief shining star that lets us remember what the heroes were like. Usually it's by bring a character back from the comic  book dead. Example: Barry Allen. With the reboot of DC's entire line I fear that one hero who still reminded me of the good days will get dark. Superman kept his beliefs and morals because of his upbringing from a good moral family. Now he will just be an alien that was part of a government experiment with a General as a Father figure. I fear that he may have little if any good morales after this new reboot.
Without the help of TV or movies comic books would be dead in the 21st century. Perhaps they will soon only exist on TV and movie screens. But it looks like my heroes are long gone now.