Mike Richards is an asshole. Nobody would know WTF Gantz was if there hadn't already been a million people reading it online before darkhorse snatched up the rights.
There's similiar sentiment in the recording industry, where the companies don't seem to get that their sales suffer because of the truly epic quanitites of shit they try to pass off as music these days - they then say it's because people download stuff off of the internet. Interestingly there was an article about a year or so ago about a shop in Denver where the owner said he believe's he's gotten more business because of sharing/pirating instead of in spite of it. He claims it's basically free advertising, people download crummy MP3s off the internet, decide they like the music and come in to buy the real recording.
It's kind of like how I go to the library, find a book I like then buy a copy for myself if I think it's worth it.
The comic industry has unloaded heaps of shit on the public, and ignored/abandoned potential markets. That's why sales today are miniscule compared to what they were decades ago.
It's too bad the automakers can't claim their current state is because people have been downloading cars off of the internet... and not just that they've been producing the same old shit over and over again while overseas competitors have pursued new technologies and markets.
That's ridiculous. The "try before you buy" aspect of freely available media, be it music or comics, can't compare to the loss of sales from a completely free alternative. With regard to music, people have a limited amount of disposable income so there's only so much more music they can buy, even if they are able to find more music they like. The preview aspect cuts the other way, too: the ability to preview music and buy songs individually allows people to avoid paying for things they don't want. That's not even considering the many people who simply choose not to pay for music at all, or only buy the music they really, really like.
Share of music purchases by age group, pink is youngest and the dark teal that is above all the others for the second half is oldest:
Unless you think music suddenly went to shit in 1999 it's hard to explain share of purchases dropping for the young and rising for the old with anything other than music piracy. Tech-savvy youngsters learned about it quickly and knew how to use computers, but older people were set in their ways and continued to buy physical media. It wasn't older people buying more, overall sales started declining in 1999 as well.
Also, people have been saying new music sucks for decades and the constant is not that music quality is in permanent free fall but that tastes change and people judge older music selectively, by the songs that keep getting played years later, and forget all the shit that no one liked because it doesn't get played anymore.
Comics sales are similarly hurt by freely available substitutes online like scanlations. Additionally, alternate media have become more competitive, putting pressure on the comic market. In the heyday of comics in the 40s the media alternatives were books, movies, and radio. Since then television was invented and programming has increased both in quantity and quality. Home video makes it much easier and cheaper to watch movies. Video games take up a lot of kids' leisure time, and adults as well now. Comics used to be cheap entertainment for kids but today there are many alternatives to fill that niche.
What do you mean by "heaps of shit", anyway? What are the markets the comic industry has ignored or abandoned?