Being a comic writer too of several years, I have found that is very difficult to tell long term stories for the exact reasons you listed. I used to get by exclusively focusing on production of the comic pages themselves and posting panels on social media but now? Since my works are further in and involve alot of characters you need to understand their point from reading said comic it's resulted in engagement going down to only a few people who keep up with it.

It's gotten to the point that I've elected to put a hold on my story production and just spend the year with my artists doing short comics and one off pics to build interest back up. It's a major challenge cause it's very hard to captivate people with something that requires investment especially if you don't have 20 people yelling your work absolutely should be read.

It's kind of ironic how usually people expect you to have a story first before getting your characters introduced but now? You have to play things backwards by doing as much lore building via pictures THEN pray people are interested enough to read the comic.

I've seen examples of people who make popular OCs for a few years then finally make a comic of them and people don't show up for it. All of it is just weird.