Let's be honest: if even who-the-fuck-is-that back-barrel forgotten whoosits like Namor the Submariner are slated for $250m summer blockbusters that cost you $12 to watch, it takes a true corner-case dead-end out-market dweeb to pay $5 a month for 22 pages of fucking X-men for the nth time. They're fuckin' thankful for the 50,000 sales they get a month because those are the fuckin' dregs, man. This is why they lose their shit over things like "black human torch." Marvel's problem is that Disney has no reason to give the first fuck about 200,000 active comic buyers other than they kind-of sort-of sustain intellectual property that chugs merrily along printing money. All of Marvel Comics probably costs Disney less than it costs them to print the weekly itineraries for Aulani and they see no reason to build up IP through risk since they're probably the most risk-averse company in entertainment. Those numbers aren't just small, they're ridiculous: Any given month, 50,000 X-men comics sold. Turner Diaries? half a million copies. Anarchist Cookbook? Two million copies. Marvel is effectively an underground press pretending it's still the '50s.
One of the comic shops here tried for a while to carry locally created and published stuff. They gave up relatively quickly because the people who tried to make and print stuff tried with the best of intentions, but it just wasn't working. Which is a shame, cause some of that "underground" stuff was kind of cool.
Speaking as someone who talked to six different presses about doing my graphic novel, roughly 90% of all the small-press stuff is self-financed. It used to sort of work out - you spend $30k getting a book illustrated and putting out 5,000 copies. 2500 of them get bought at $10. You get 80% of that. Turns out you're only about $12k in the hole on your book and if that means you get a movie option out of it, you made a hell of a brilliant investment. Lookin' at you, 30 days of night. Wanted had sold less than 10,000 copies at the time Timur Bekmambetov optioned it. That was the universe that existed before Disney made eight fucking summer blockbusters to justify the Avengers.
I know a guy who used to make $800/page drawing for Marvel. He left for Hollywood in time to storyboard Alien Vs. predator. I know the guy who did the character design for the X-men movies. he has an MFA in sculpture and when we've talked about comics, he's said "I mean, I could draw that but it's so much easier to just farm it out to Korea."
I remember reading somewhere, I don't remember (maybe you?), that during the height of the speculation market the numbers could be considered inflated because a lot of people would buy multiple copies of the same issue, one to read, the other to hold onto in hopes of value jumping. I don't remember Warner Brothers buying DC. I do remember Disney buying Marvel and thinking either A) the comics would improve because Disney would have the capital to pump into Marvel and prop them up or B) the comics would drop in quality because Disney would be more focused on the non-comics market. I'm sad to see it was B, though it's been kind of fun to see all of the Marvel merchandise that's out there now. Speaking of sales and the death of news stand sales. On my drive home from work today, I was daydreaming about opening up a corner store and thinking that I didn't want to sell Liquor because I didn't want to hassle with the license, the liabilities, etc. So I thought about what I'd carry instead and I figured I'd get two magazine racks. One with the magazines you usually see in the corner store, the other one full of nothing but comics. Then I thought about what I'd put in them and I figured only family friendly and teen titles, because I don't think that parents understand that there are adult comics out there now and parents willing to buy their kids at a corner store definitely wouldn't be as savy as parents who would go to an actual comic shop. Then I thought about all of the family friendly titles I know, made a hell of a list, and deliberately kept Marvel and DC off of them. It was a fun way to kill an afternoon commute.
You build whatever the neighborhood wants and focus on a high-margin, low-investment product that you can sell through experience. There's a hobby store nearby. Hobby Lobby took over the space next door in 2007. They're still going strong because they sell the shit Hobby Lobby doesn't have... and they also do R/C tournaments, parties, and they can fix your quadcopter. i've got four comics shops within easy driving distance... but I've got six tabletop gaming outfits. When I left in 2007 that number was two. If you make it a place people want to hang out and spend money, they will hang out and spend money. If you can make what you sell cost enough to cover the rent, you're good to go. We've got GameStops all over the place, same as anywhere else... but these guys have gone from one location to nine in the past eight years 'cuz you can hang out and have fun.