Superheroes being popular yet comics are dying probably has mostly to do with my last point in the previous post. It just doesn't compete with other formats for people's attention and it hasn't for a long time. Marvel and DC have tried a lot of stuff to bring in more eyes over the years but it hasn't done much at all. Trying new characters, bringing favorites back, going nuts with storylines, etc, it's just been falling year after year and long before they went "woke." The harder Social Justice angle in recent years is just another attempt to try and cash in on the vocal crowd but it hasn't really done much to the losing tide they've been facing. I mean it's certainly done a number for folks that are left and created some really angry people but it's only putting the nail in the coffin for the industry itself more than anything.
It's funny you mentioned Terminator because that's exactly a similar situation as to comics right now. T2 was peak and everyone movie afterwards was just getting worse and worse causing fans to steadily become disinterested in it. They tried something to appeal to the vocal crowd and it didn't do much at all for the film. Damage was done already by years of stupid shit. It wasn't what they've been doing that actually killed the franchise.
Manga's biggest sellers are shounen but that doesn't detract from the fact that the variety of content available for folks and it's selling well. Check out
Amazon's Best Sellers list for manga and you'll find a bunch of those action series but you'll also find a horror manga, a spy thriller, a fantasy adventure, romcom, and even a volleyball manga making their top 50 for individual volumes. It helps that the stories are pretty well done and that's an area where Marvel and DC have failed at but it's not because of their Social Justice initiatives in recent years. It's that their writers have been shit a long time before any of this has been going on.
