Yeah, a lot of the superhero stuff has gone rather stale in the U.S. comic industry [side point: sadly even when they inject fresh blood, like Orson Scott Card writing Ultimate Iron Man, it still seems bland (he's basically writing Ender's Shadow again)].
I now tend to just go for good stories. I find these primarily in Vertigo (Mike Carey) and some other places (Steve Niles, Jeff Smith, etc). I agree with MixedMyth that 90% of manga out there is crap (like everything else), but there are two that I've found that I've really enjoyed, Naruto and Full Metal Alchemist (odd how I discovered those through the cartoons).
However, I do agree very strongly with one of the original point in this thread about how if I'm reading a comic in english I want to read it from left to right. I'd even be willing to pay a bit more for the comics if they were to fix that. However, since publishers would rather keep the art-form pure or whatever, I just read it for free online. Screw em'.
As for the death of american comics, I think once some of the non-strictly superhero ones with good stories increase in popularity the problem would be aleviated somewhat. We're already starting to see authors crossing over to comics to try to strengthen stories, like the aforementioned Cardd, Strazynski (anyone read his Spiderman stuff? is it any good?), and I think some scottish mystery author is supposed to be taking over Hellblazer now.
The consumerism and people just out to make a quick buck does bother me though. It was incredibly frustrating to see how as time went on the graphic novel section at a Borders in my hometown gradually shrank, while a section filled with crappy manga gradually grew in it's place. It was even more frustrating that you'd then have all these middle and high-school kids standing around reading it, blocking the isles, and blocking my access to the graphic novel shelves. It's almost enough to induce a reasonable man to violence...
Something was mentioned earlier about popularity of american comics abroad. When I lived in Brazil (a long time ago) newsstands sold american comics, and there were people who read it (my friends and I spent our days at school sitting in the back of the classroom reading X-Men). And the popularity seems to continue to grow - my mom went to visit recently and brought me back a portuguese issue of Lucifer (one of the comics I read regularly) which I thought was pretty interesting. Do note however, that they also have their own brazilian comics, which are much more popular.
I don't really have a point ot all this.