Past they’re only person to person from the consumers point of view. The artist? They’re making money off of someone’s else’s IP it’s not like you made a cool pic for a friend, you sold it.

Excellent observation, my only counter-point is I would argue that individual creative assets are actually better than the "play-it-safe," multi-billion dollar conglomerates out there. There are no easy answers but I'd argue with some of the cool shit I've seen recently it has NOTHING To do with "exploiting a pre-existing and protected IP" And more along the line of "Hey [Empty Profit Driven Multi-Billion Dollar Publisher, Why not give these creative folks a chance?]"