There are still some left in the U.S., but they tend to be lower profile creators and publishers. People like Stokoe, Revel, and Piskor just write and release what they want and their work tends to be something tough to do in any medium other than comics, save maybe for animation. Stokoe especially, as he won't stretch his comics out to be six issues if he does not have enough ideas.
Why would anyone else be buying mainstream American comics? Europeans and Japanese comics are vastly superior. Want an affordable, lean, and best bang for the buck sequential art story? Manga it is. Want something with much higher production values and refined or experimental that usually takes a long time to produce? European comics are the way to go. American comics offer the worst of both worlds, and less original than either foreign offering. There are good indie American comics of course, but it takes a lot of digging to find them.
TPBs sales are actually growing a little bit every year. That's why Marvel and DC keep publishing more and more of them and went with distributors who have ins into bookstore markets. A little too late, since manga and scholastic already dominate there. Big two used to dismiss bookstore and TPB market too. Manga and scholastic took advantage of it, and now they are two thirds of the American comic book industry.
Digital platforms are becoming an uphill battle too, since there Marvel and DC paid and still pay little attention to digital platforms. Meanwhile self independent authors, smaller publishers, Europeans, Japanese, and Amazon have been selling their books there. Comicxology's main page promotes platform original and indie books more than big two. Meanwhile European comics are where manga was 25 years ago and growing every year, in spite of nonexistent marketing. Marvel and DC will be fighting yet another uphill battle soon.
It's amusing to see Lianna K stealing crowdfunding money. She used to criticize Anita for doing the same thing.
She was a Nintendo Treehouse employee. On the side she worked as a e-whore, prostitute, and was pimping out her boyfriend too. To both men and women, and very likely abused him and forced the poor guy into a poly relationship and then into whoring. Last but not least, Allison has a pretty libertine approach to CP and thinks that age of consent should be lowered. Of course, Nintendo was not too happy after they found out, and fired her as a result. Her boyfriend managed to get out of relationship with her too. All of that led to Allison sperging on twitter, and eventually leaving spotlight when she got too much negative attention and not enough money.
For more details, see threads on her antics
https://kiwifarms.net/threads/alison-rapp-maria-mint-123grapeman.18002/
