Today marks the end of the post-Infinite Crisis/52/Final Crisis DC Universe and the beginnings of DC Comics’ relaunch, The New 52.

In a recent L.A. Times Hero Complex article, it’s noted that comic book sales have consistently dropped in the last three years. In the same piece, DC Comics co-publisher Dan DiDio says of superhero comics, “[t]he truth is people are leaving anyway, they’re just doing it quietly, and we have been papering it over with increased prices.” He continues, “[w]e didn’t want to wake up one day and find we had a bunch of $20 books that 10,000 people are buying.”

While some of the drop-off can be attributed to the reasons stated in the Hero Complex piece (Twitter, YouTube, Xbox 360, etc.), a reason largely ignored by the piece is the current recession. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the United States has been in a recession since December of 2007. This is not news to anyone with a TV or the ability to read.

The funny thing is, comic people – fan and pro alike – should have predicted this. We had our own miniature four-color speculative bubble back in the 1990s. Remember Turok #1? Adventures of Superman #500? Tim Vigil? If it weren’t for the talents working in small press and Vertigo, who knows what the landscape would look like today?

While DC Comics may not represent the whole of the comics industry, it is a major force in the business. Small press has expanded the digital frontier. Whether it’s a phenomenon like web comic Penny Arcade or Unwinnable’s own Kurt Christenson’s work with collaborator Reilly Brown on their comic, Power Play, the comic book industry is in new territory.

2007, coincidentally, was one of the best years the comic business had in the past decade. According to Comichron.com, 2007’s top 300 comic book dollar sales were $270,000,000. 2010’s dollar sales were down to $245,720,000. Please keep in mind that the average price per comic jumped from $3.17 in 2007 to $3.55 in 2010. With a drop in money spent by consumers and a rise in price, that means fewer people are buying less comic books. The timing is too close to the current recession to be ignored. Still, there is hope.

Nielsen SoundScan is the official method of tracking the sales of music and music video products in the United States and Canada. In SoundScan’s 2011 mid-year sales report, music sales (both digital and physical) are up 8.5% over 2010. Considering there was a drop in sales between 2009 and 2010, that is a very big deal. If the music business (an industry that largely buried its head in the sand when the digital revolution began) can recover with no foresight, surely the comic business can. Right?

I was hard on this reboot in the past. It was a fanboy, knee-jerk reaction to the hype DC released at the time. I still think they should’ve been more clear from the get-go. Look what happened to All Star Batman & Robin, The Boy Wonder!