"High Voltage" Logic levels why they are rare
1) Partly true indeed but it is more that in modern ICs the transistors are smaller meaning the supply voltage must be lower because of the smaller structures. The limit is the field strength (Volts per distance) that can be handled so when the distance goes down the voltage must go down as well. How much power is consumed also relates to this but this can also be tuned separately by the the threshold voltage implant offering a choice between fast but high power consumption or slower but smaller power consumption.

2) If you destroy an IC it is very rarely the wires that melt, depending on what you did wrong there are many ways to damage an IC. Reversing the supply voltage for example damages the ESD protection diodes. These have nothing to do with the functionality of the IC itself but need to be there to protect it against ESD discharges.

3) what you see is the packaging, the IC itself will be only a few square millimeter in area. Fact remains that in the 1970s we could only fit a couple of thousand transistors on a few square millimeter. Nowadays we can easily fit hundreds of thousands of transistors in a few square millimeter. This is due to more modern IC manufacturing processes.

4) the -28 volt is probably needed for the VFD. You will not find modern ICs that can handle such voltages as almost no-one uses VFDs anymore as these are very power hungry.

Interfacing with this old technology is a challenge, you really have to know what you're doing. It is not for beginners.