[gregjh]

Sad but no surprise. Comics will survive in different forms.

[The Australian Panther]

I think the European comic industry and the Japanese one are where the energy is these days.
Another factor is the current high print of the paper they [and books] are printed on.   

[paw broon]

gregjh, it does seem that digital will be the future.  I don't think American publishers will be able to sell viable quantities if the price continues to rise.  Punters just wont see the value, or be able to justify the cash for 20/22 pages a month. Even Japanese and European publishers must be getting concerned at the increasing cost of paper. 
How much are fans willing to pay for, a) a 20/22 page traditional American title
b) a Euro GN of high quality and printing standards
c) manga.
Here, One Punch Man costs £7.99.  The new series Shibuya Goldfish costs £14.97 from amazon.
Gamma Draconis from Titan comics costs £12.99. 

I've been looking at what we've lost with the disappearance of many newspaper strips.  Entertainment.
2 examples, Susie of the Sunday Dispatch by Norman Pett and Judy by David Wright.  Admittedly, these  are from decades ago but entertaining and of good quality.  Flook was a strip by Trog which was political, funny, satirical and downright good fun.  Fortunately it can still be found but strips of this quality no longer appear and newspapers are the worse for it.
https://www.tebeosfera.com/T3content/img/T3_muestras/T3_autores_firmas/3/1/60-641-431.jpg

[SuperScrounge]

Phil Foglio used to print Girl Genius as a normal comic book, until he realized that the issues were just an expensive advertising pamphlet for the collected trades. So he stopped printing it as a comic book & turned it into a webcomic and they have crowdfunders to produce a collected edition.