Thank you for the compliment, but though I don't make pop culture ephemera explicit in my webcomic due to the focused narrative, I have very strong influences that make themselves felt-- Joss Whedon, Warren Ellis, Grant Morrison, Masashi Kishimoto, and others from the later 90's to the current time. I'm more interested in the pop culture of the now, so that's where more of the tropes are drawn from.

And saying that, I think that even if the new media hasn't lived up to its potential, that's an inevitability due to Sturgeon's Law-- a phenomenon which hits online media much harder, due to the lack of entrance qualifications. But amidst all the amateurish garbage, there's plenty of good stuff as well-- even if webcomics are better known for Ctrl Alt Delete than Gunnerkrigg Court, comics like the latter are there, and can succeed. So the Noughties get points for establishing a format where making great works is much easier facilitates, regardless of how many people actually do so ( again, percentage wise, at least 90% won't ).

I should also note that this is the decade where comics, if not necessarily the established superhero comics, really turned around and started to gain legitimacy. To say you read graphic novels isn't a stigma anymore ( though to say you read superhero comics may still draw that response ).