Can creator owned comics save the comics industry?

[GlennSimpson]

Diamond and the companies incentivise comic shop owners to buy more of particular issues by giving them special variant covers if they order x amount or a discount if they but x amount.

Of course.
They also want the readers to buy the comics they picked out for the shelf.
Because, by gosh, they know what the readers will like.

It doesn't change the fact that, whether or not the stuff on the shelf sells, DC and Marvel already got paid.
And that's what they care about.
That's what makes the comic shops their customers and not the readers.

I think that if all comics were returnable (for up to 45 days, so a second issue would have a chance to pull in readers) then that would make the readers become more of a factor to DC and Marvel.
And take a lot of pressure off the comic shops.

Well, if you're going to get technical about how the money flows, Diamond Distributors is DC's customer. The shops are Diamond's customers.

But the functional reality is that most comics shops aren't going to just blindly bring in whatever DC and Marvel tell them to, regardless of whether they can sell them. At worst, they might buy some extras to get a variant, but then they'll sell the variant for enough to make up for what they paid for the extras of the regular.

None of which, in my opinion, has much of an effect of what DC and Marvel publish. The lineup wouldn't be all that different if you did away with incentive variants. Heck, they generally put the variants on the better-selling books, so it's not like they are being used to keep poorly-selling books afloat.

Good shops are well known for recommending indy books to people who are looking for that sort of thing. This isn't a problem.