My question to the forum : Marvel has had hit movies for over ten years why have the comic books not seen a bump in sales?  

Even more interesting is the fact that the Watchmen movie was not even a huge hit. It grossed 185 mil. Infinity War last year grossed 2 billion dollars. 

In the past twenty or so years, most spikes in sales (and typically it's mostly in bask issue sales) due to a movie or a TV show springs from speculation. It's kind of crazy how that works, too. For instance....

A movie is announced featuring some Marvel character who has not previously appeared in a film.

Speculators jump on this by seeking out the earliest appearances and key issues featuring that character, expecting the values to rise on those comics.

They do rise for the short term, mostly because of the speculators themselves all pouncing on the back issues during the same relative timeframe. This causes a situation where these speculators are driving the prices up themselves in a mad race to gather those issues.

The prices top out, the movie is released, and more often than not, within the year after the movie's release the prices subside.

In some instances, interest in the character is higher than it was prior to a film release, but any legitimate and long-term interest in the character in question is typically minimal.

And, yeah, it doesn't help that those comparatively few people out there whose interest in the characters was truly piqued due to a film of TV show, will usually find the actual source material to be nowhere near what they saw and enjoyed on the screen.

New fans are brought into comics because of the occasional movie or TV show. In fact, I just had someone ask me this week about acquiring some comics featuring characters that have been featured in recent films. He and his son want to read up on the comics that inspired the film versions. So, it does happen, and every little bit is welcomed, but it's generally not a substantial increase in selling the comics.

Yeah, someone who enjoyed the Batman TV show and picked up a Batman comic found the same characters presented basically the same way.  For all its faults, the Batman TV show was a pretty faithful adaptation of the Batman comics at the time.

For a big chunk of the MCU's lifespan, Steve Rogers wasn't Captain America (or was a Hydra sleeper agent), Thor wasn't Thor, Tony Stark wasn't Iron Man.  Bruce Banner wasn't a recognizable Hulk.  The Avengers didn't star those characters.  On top of that, you have to go way out of your way to find comics.  So if you did go out of your way and find the comics, you wouldn't see anything recognizable from the movies you enjoyed.

This is double true of the DC movies, which continue to resemble the comics not at all.  Exhibit A:  Aquaman.

I think it comes down to expectations.  Fans of the WATCHMEN movie or the WALKING DEAD show who want more or who want to check out the "real" version of the story, will hunt down the books.  Right now, the "real" version of the Marvel heroes is what we see on the big screen.  Fans of those might go the bookstore and explore some trades of stories 20 or 50 years old, but there's not much in the comic shops for them.