Comics have a huge impact on pop culture. They form the basis for some of the biggest budget TV shows and movies which last for a long time in our collective consciousness: The Dark Knight series, Watchmen, the Avengers, etc.

Several just on their own are huge cultural juggernauts: Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts, XKCD, Penny Arcade, etc.

I don't know why you think comics are. Trojan Horse for ESG/activism. Like all media, they seek to reach wider and wider audiences, for a good chunk of time, the best perceived way to do that was to diversify those offerings. Even if that didn't end up working (assuming your POV in good faith), that doesn't mean it was a "Trojan horse for activism" anymore than the rise and fall of the shonen genre in manga was a subversive attempt to inject masculinity into the populace.

What you term as ESG and all is not a shadowy cabal to force people to think a certain way. It's just companies trying to do what sells. You forget that in the beginning it did work, which is why it caught on.

> Like all media, they seek to reach wider and wider audiences, for a good chunk of time,

Unfortunately this trends towards stretching out their characters and plotlines to utter absurdity and diluting storyline quality.

And I'm not sure if the ESG storyline angles even sell. Maybe we can pick a sample comparison; I remember a time when X-men had a feminism angle in their storylines. Then I read the recent X-men House/Rise-Of-X and it was so much better since it refocused on a new setting and their future instead of referencing ongoing real life politics.