The monthly pamphlet format isn't going away entirely until there's another, thriving option that catches on with the general public. While offering monthly comics as iTunes-style downloads for 99 cents each, or whatever, makes a ton of sense to anyone with a functioning brain, the fact of the matter is that there's still a market for the pamphlets. The aging fanboy superhero audience still has a nostagia boner and seems to still believe, somewhere in the back of their minds, that their print comics are someday going to be worth oodles of money. And that audience is standing in the way of Marvel and DC moving into the new century, because there *is* still a market there, and it's better to go with the devil you know than risk everything on an unproven market you may or may not understand.
Of course, there's nothing stopping Marvel marketing to kids and non-fanboys *in addition to* their usual crowd, I'm just not sure they know how. Witness DC's "Earth One" graphic novels, or whatever they're called--right idea, terrible execution. They're still thinking like fanboys, when the audience they're trying to reach needs a different tack. Now, Disney being in charge means they might actually get some people who know how to reach a mass audience for a change.
I think the idea of offering their old material cheaply is a good one--I'd almost say post it for free online like a webcomic. Or sell it for the iPad, but as cheap as possible; try and recapture the golden days of kids buying comics en masse because they were 50 cents each. The datedness of the material would be offset by how cheap it was. And the more serious fans would still want to own the physical collections.
But I doubt Marvel or DC is that smart, even with the new era of accessibility seemingly on the horizon. It's likely going to fall to the smaller companies, or even self-publishers, to make the transition.
