John Byrne wrote: ...In fact, a return to Marvel, leaving DC behind, was considered by most of my fans to be intrinsically a step up. It was a "return to glory", not a slide further down...

I can vouch for that! I love a lot about DC, but I started out a Marvel fan, and at that time I definitely was more about Marvel Comics than DC Comics. I collected "New Teeb Titans" and "Legion of Super-Heroes" at DC before "Crisis On Infinite Earths" because those titles were the closest to Marvel at that time in my view. After "Crisis," and especially because of JB taking on the title, I started to buy the "Superman" titles, but I was always hoping he'd return to Marvel. And I loved it that he came to work on "West Coast Avengers," a comic I was all ready collecting.

Yes it does. But that's not what the Image boys did.

Andrew W. Farago wrote: The number of people reading comics, period, is picking up when you factor in things like webcomics, manga, comics circulated through libraries, trades sold in chain bookstores, and other methods of distribution that were non-existent or underutilized until recently.

I'd like some numbers on this kind of thing.  Not that I don't believe you, but I have a hard time believing that comic book readership is up simply because there are more ways to read them.  Half of the distribution methods you cite hardly take the place of the newsstand distribution that was in place in nearly every grocery store, gas station, and convenience store for decades until it was all but pushed out.  Comic books have been circulated in libraries for decades.  I read them in the 70s at my local library.  Nothing new.  Trades in book stores have been selling there for at least 20 years.  Again, not a new method of distribution nor one that was underutilized. 

I dunno.  I can't help but think that the same people buying comics at their local LCS are also the ones reading web comics, buying trades and collections of comic strips...like me.  In other words, I see more avenues of distribution, none as successful as the newsstand, being used by the same 40 year old comic book fan with barely a trickle of new readership being introduced to the medium.  Just saying a superhero movie drives fans to the comics is a bad assumption that only really came to fruition with Burton's BATMAN but which no company, Marvel or DC, has capitalized on with their myriad of hits over the last decade.  In the end, I guess I'd just like proof that there are new readers coming out in droves or that readership is up.  I can't believe it when I see recent sales figures, more than those posted in this thread, and compare them to even five years ago let alone ten, twenty, or thirty years ago.