One of (if not the most) obvious difference between yesterday and today is the serious lack of news stand distribution.
I fondly call the early days of my youth when I first started reading (circa 1974) and taking the time to peruse every section of the spinner rack.
Remember spinner racks? They're gone now. Some of the more major convience stores of the day had TWO! Both full of comic books. Of course this was long before the advent of direct sales and comic book shops. It was a rare event before the mid-1980s to walk into even a grocery store and discover that they did not carry any comics amongst their magazine selections.
On one hand even places like Walgreens drugstores and Wal-Mart still carry comic books to some extent; although the selection is restricted (for lack of a better word) to just the true "kiddie"/G-rated books.
But nowadays if you walk into a convience store and they just happen to have any comic books, it's just a couple of titles mixed in with all the gossip, celebrity, sports, and other magazines.
The worst arrangement however is when all those periodicals are on the lower shelves and the more mature/adult titles are at the top of the rack where they are more prominently displayed. My theory on this is whoever fills the magazine racks seems to do so based upon the height of the potential customer, and that puts the more "popular" (best selling?) at eye-level.