I just bought the april/may issue. I noticed this issue has advertisements by the following major card companies: artbox, dynamic forces, stellar, rittenhouse archives, inkworks, comic images, toon station, and topps.

plus there seems to be a bunch of smaller companies catering to niche markets such as tobacco bad kids, people cards, galaxy goons and package parodies.

furthermore, there seems to have been a recent upsurge in the number of comic art sets brought to the market.

a while ago I thought the non-sport card hobby was dying. now I think the hobby is actually going again or is this just wishful thinking on my behalf?

Hi Notebook, a couple of weeks ago someone here posted a comment about the Non-sports hobby being in trouble, and several optimistic persons responded that the Non-sports cards would always be around. I strongly believe that. It's true that things aren't like they were a few years ago, FPG and Comic Images were producing sets so fast you couldn't keep up with them. New Marvel and Star Trek sets were coming out so fast you wouldn't even be able to finish them in time.
Companies like TOPPS will always be producing Non-sports, but since TOPPS is mainly a sports card company, they will never produce more than a handful of sets a year.
The small companies are a wild card, experience has shown that many will disapear after the first set, but some of them will continue to make new sets. But new companies will come along, and the cycle will continue. Of course, the big non-sport companies, Rittenhouse and Inkworks will still be cranking out great sets.
So, the hobby isn't dying, it never was, but it has slowed down. It may boom again, if we get another big fad like Desert Storm cards.