They're good for showing people your stuff, but they do zip as a form of advertising, since you actually have to advertise the existence of the page, and get people to come and look at your ads. I personally removed the web-browser program from my computer, because I found it a big waste of time. I noticed that it took at least half an hour to give even a cursory look to an established web site, and I just don' t have that kind of time. In order to make this technique effective, you would need a 'hook' to draw people to your web-site, and I really don't know what you could offer that would get a lot of comic readers to check it out. Each of these have much lower circulation, but also don't have the same level of ad competition in them.
Direct mail is good, and it's economical.
If you would like a list of retailers that are friendly to independent products, email me a request, and I'll send it along. Same goes for anyone else reading this post. If you like, I can ask my father, Al Swan, to drop you a line to discuss the pros and cons of 800 numbers, WATS lines and all that telecommunication stuff. He's a retired rep from Phone Power, AGT, Bell etc. If you are serious about getting that kind of stuff, I'd strongly recommend talking to someone outside the major phone companies, before setting up anything.