It's a combination of two things really. The recession and economic crisis coupled with the advent of digital distribution and an evolving of the industry.
In a crisis such as we have faced on the economy, entertainment and luxury industries are the ones who feel the hurt.
People look at store sales and cry there is a crisis going on, but all that really proves is the industry is not recession proof. There was a study that examined the rate of slowing and falling sales in the different mediums of entertainment, and comics fell within the same percentage as others. Video games, films, magazines, books, and hit the hardest, music have all seen fairly drastic slumps in their numbers. The mediums that saw major problems were music, magazines, and newspapers, though this is in big parts the recession, the internet has also cut deeply into the profits of magazines and newspapers, and piracy is still a problem for music, though iTunes has only seen monumental gains in it's profits.
So, if the comic industry's drop-off fell within the ratio of normal for the other big entertainment industries (even if it's number's aren't at the same level), I wouldn't find that comforting, but also not particularly alarming. Further, we must consider the growing pains of the digital age. While we never will see comics disappear, there will be a day when the comic shop does. If you look back and remember the infancy of the digital distribution, and still now, the many music stores across the country began to cry that the death of the music industry had arrived. This was not true, though the death knell of brick and mortar music shops was sounding. Analysts, and executives, and even artists began to cry foul about dropping numbers, market uncertainty, and the fear of purely digital distribution. Now we see that digital distribution really is the future of music sales, and it clearly has mitigated some of the damage piracy has caused. Could you imagine the state of the industry if digital distribution hadn't succeeded?
I see comics experiencing a little of this uncertainty as well. Digital distribution promises the possibility of unprecedented exposure to the industry, ease of delivery, and the accessibility a digital service can provide. As devices like the iPad become commonplace, we see that the over 1 million downloads ComiXology has seen on Android alone, isn't a one-off fluke. But, this causes a market uncertainty. While more sales altogether may be seen, it may not be pooled into one comic that was just released. While a back catalog of a publisher sees renewed interest, their newest issue may stay stagnant until the market grows.
Further we see rather large sections of graphic novels popping up in our book retailers. People are more and more shifting from the magazine treatment in order to purchase the entire novel. Some wait for their stories, or boxed collections, to appear on Amazon for one big purchase.
So, will comics ever disappear? I doubt in my lifetime they will ever approach irrelevancy. But they are evolving, as much of the monolithic entertainment industry is. To look at the comic industry as a whole, we see, relative to the recession, a very powerful entity. Yet, it is an entity in change. While our superheroes will not be forgotten into the void, we may eventually reach a time where the brick and mortar stores and that focus on magazine issues of comics fade. While it would be a shame for the operators and those who enjoy that side of the comics world, our hobby and the industry will soldier on into whatever incarnation takes their place.
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