I'd assume making a comic book comes with fixed costs in the 30-40k range since you're paying one or two artists, a writer and some amount of editor time for a few months.
Which sounds like a lot for us brokies but big publishers such as Marvel can afford to take that kind of cash from the Spider-Man war chest and gamble on stupid shit every once in a while. get it made for 50k, print a limited run for 10k, and on the off chance it's Gwenpool you make a million and offset the last three America Chavezes.

It's the entertainment industry after all, sometimes you just have to go out and try shit. Movies and vidya used to be the same, editors alternated between cash grabs and weird shit that wasn't even guaranteed to break even.