>>7613950There were only a few dozen people who got those jobs every decade. It was never a viable thing.
Think about it - if 50 random people from every fucking state in the USA all can see the same fucking comic strips across the funny pages of their local newspapers, that means that there isn't actually space for a few dozen comic strip artists PER STATE, it means there's space for a few dozen in the entire goddamn country out of 300+ million people. If a tiny 0.1% of that is artists interested in making newspaper comics that's 3000 people competing for a few dozen slots, minus those which ended up being eternal zombies like fucking Garfield, Peanuts, Family Circus, and so on.
There likely was way more than 3000 artists though, if you include those who were rather /beg/ or just shit at scheduling - as they still took time to sift out.
Webcomics exploded in the 2000s as a pressure release for this I assume.