As sad as it is, comics and the comics industry don't have to go, but they are going to go. There's really not a large enough market for it anymore, especially when some trades are going near 10 bucks, for a funny book, it's not good value. It'll always be around and it will be a niche thing even more so now, but as an industry: it's done.
Monthly comics might be on the way out, but graphic novels and Trade paperbacks continue to sell well, and are in fact are increasing. The following links are an interesting read from over the last year:
Bleeding Cool article on Graphic Novels Sales Up 43% in Bookstores
Comics Beat article on Comics and Graphic Novel Sales top $1.21B in 2019
Forbes article on the diminishing sales of Superhero comics. <---------really worth a read
There are two takeaways from the above that are of note -
One; Graphic Novel sales are hugely up compared to comic book sales, to the tune of $765 million vs $355 million in 2019. The readership demographic is changing dramatically: Monthly superhero comics and graphic novels are massively in decline, and the huge box office movies have
no impact in bringing in new readers to the monthly comics. Instead, in the market, Juvenile market graphic novels (none superhero specific/indies etc) MASSIVELY outsell superhero properties.
Of the entire market:
41% of sales: Juvenile Market graphic novels,
28% of sales: Manga graphic novels, and
10% (!) of sales: Superhero graphic novels
So lots of people are reading graphic novels, but they're not interested in ones about superheros.
And two; the majority of graphic novel sales come from book stores, not
comic book stores. This was also an advantage over the pandemic lock-down, as a lot more bookstores stayed open than comic book stores.
So a thing of hope is there
is huge readership and demand out there for comic creators and artists, and publishers/companies should focus upon these new customers more so than trying to sell superheroes to a tiny fraction of an audience.