The data I found most interesting was this:
13-17 — 1%-2%

18-24 — 14%-22%

25-34 — 37%-42%

35-44 — 27%-35%

45-54 — 7%-11%

55+ — 2%
First, the percentage of 13-17 year-olds reading comics is fucking dire. Your teen years are when you develop obsessions with Star Wars and LoTR and anime, and yet none of these kids want to read comic books. This means that there is almost no audience being developed to replace the current one.
The other interesting bit is that the largest group of comic readers, 25-34 year olds would have been in nearly the same age bracket (8-17) in the year 1995. 1995 was the year when the last comics crash occurred. This means that the largest group of comics fans got into comics in the late 80's and early 90's, and that after the crash, the industry was no longer able to pull in young readers. I don't care for demographically focused publishing strategies, but this data should really be setting off alarm bells, and I'm surprised that nothing has been done.
Comics as a medium, it's clear now, will never grow substantially.
Just because the current crop of publishers is too incompetent to get the job done doesn't mean that no one else will. People around the world love comics. In Japan, comics are mainstream. In France and Belgium, comics are an artform and classic comics sell in the millions. Even in the U.S., Watchmen put up huge numbers and will sell for decades, to say nothing of the massive comics industry we had before 1955. Maybe superhero comics have reached their zenith, but the industry as a whole has more than a fighting chance to expand again.
