The one thing this doesn’t account for is digital subscriptions numbers.. its possible that with digital subscribers actually readers are comparable to 10 or 20 years ago, because these would not show up in this channel...
I have no idea what those look like, as they are direct subscriptions with the publishers, their numbers may be buried in their quarterly or annual SEC filings...
But I would be honestly very shocked to see that the overall readership has gone up over that time.
There was an idependent comic company that started publishing the 90s, that completely was targeting diverse/minority audience, it got some attention for a while, and with the comic boom during this time, they did get sales...
Valiant Comics they are still around, but nowhere near the hype they had during that time.... But they were very focused at the time with black, gay and other minority characters during the early 90s. Introduced a lot of books most are now defunct. I’d have to go through my old books from that time... but they definitely were trying to appeal to that way back in the early 90s.
There was another one (not image) as I recall from that time too that was doing something similar....
That’s a good point (about digital subscriptions), and one theory I have about why readership could actually go up would be mirroring what you see happening with video games. As more and more adults have no children, they have the time/interest/money to continue childhood hobbies well into adulthood. I have no issue with that, as long as they accept the consequences of their reproductive decisions. I’ve seen people 40+ years old get Transformers tattoos, but they don’t have children that would find it odd or unusual.