I can't remember the last time I saw an Archie comic outside of a book store. I can't imagine they're selling terribly well these days. 

On that subject. What happened to all those other comic companies I remember when I was a kid. DC, Marvel, and Archie are the only comic companies around that I remember from childhood. 

If Archie is being held up as comics done by professionals and they sell that dismally, then what happened to all those other companies? There seems to be something much more going on than just fans turning out fannish product. If the comic industry was a healthy one, then DC & Marvel should be the jokes of the industry, not playing Last Man Standing. 

As for this putting rest to the idea that characters need to change to keep an audience... well, how exactly is that. Here's a company which does everything it can to not change their characters and they're pulling in dismal numbers. If anything that sounds like they should have done something long before now to arrest the decline. 

Any long time franchise tends to change a bit with the times (seeing as Veronica got replaced by a gay character, clearly Archie was attempting to do just that). The degree of change necessary is where the debate comes in and it's largely "what works, works". 

If Wolverine gets transformed from a hideous troll into a tall handsome leading man and brings the audience, sounds like the kind of change a company will get behind and celebrate. Congratulations, Wolverine is now a mainstream A-list hero, 

Good luck, trying to convince anyone that change was a bad thing. 

Then why have DC/Marvel and Archie both ended up in the same place while taking two very different paths?

Where did all those other comic publishers go that were kicking around in the 60s and 70s? 

There's something else going on here than just fans-turned-pro took over the comic industry if everyone ended up dying in the same ditch. 

If NCIS and CSI got taken over by fans-turned-pro and pissed away their audience tomorrow, they'd be replaced by shows who didn't alienate their audience. If the network ratings fell by any substantial number, then we'd be blaming digital and cable offerings, not the two biggest franchises going in the toilet. 

Fans taking over the reigns might be part of the problem, but there's more to the story than someone not doing Batman right. 

Given the huge success of super-hero movies these days, I can easily see young adults starting a comic habit without having read them as a kid. Comics are a pretty important part of the geek scene, lots of opportunities for cross-pollination. 

It' would be great to get comics in the hands of kids, but let's face the brutal facts. Magazines are starting to become harder and harder to find outside of bookstores (which are harder and harder to find), I really don't see that kind of comics circulation coming back. The publishing market (at least as physical is concerned) is dying a slow death.