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I tend to think of the cutting of pages as the First Mistake. The idea that comics were 10¢ and had to STAY 10¢ was a deliberate self-ghettoization of the format. TIME and NEWSWEEK were "real magazines" that started with a 10¢ cover price. When their prices went up, and those of comics did not, our little industry was more or less declaring "We're not REAL."

(A repeated experience over my years in comics has been civilians declaring themselves appalled by the current cover price -- whatever it was! -- and announcing that they paid only 5¢ for comics when they were kids. "Only if you were buying them at second hand book stores," I would say, to no effect.)

Setting aside problems of cost, distribution, missed schedules, etc, the Number One thing that has served to slit the throat of comics is that they no longer offer something that cannot be found elsewhere.

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What about the rise of digital distribution? Putting aside the nostalgic feelings of traditional readers to the digital format, certainly kids are unlikely to be averse to reading on their digital tablet. Seems kids are more likely to encounter comics on a tablet or computer than a newsstand, even if there still was a bustling newsstand market. It is hard to tell how big the digital marketplace is right now, but comixology, before selling to Amazon, was reporting 100 million comic downloads a year (2012-2013). http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20130925/NEWS/130929937#

While there are only a few thousand comic stores, over half of U.S. households with kids aged 2-12 have tablets. https://www.npd.com/wps/portal/npd/us/news/press-releases/ki ds-tablet-play-and-household-ownership-increases-reports-npd /. It seems there is a viable potential marketplace that gives publishers access to new comic readers. If kids aren't buying comics, at this point, it seems more like a content problem--publishers aren't designing (or marketing) age-appropriate material to those readers or they aren't appropriately designing the content for the digital format. 

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That's a bit like saying it wasn't the fall that killed the guy, it was the sudden stop.

The Digital Age has done much to damage ol' fashioned ink-on-paper. but it's come at the end. The factors I names have grown up over decades.