Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in Yellow Springs, Ohio.  This week, Bennett asks "what's next" for comics.

I don't like to complain, which is a shame seeing as how it's something I excel at it, but 2011 sucked pretty profoundly and not just for me; all anecdotal evidence suggests it's been a simply awful year for lots of people.  Not to mention as the entire entertainment industry, the direct sales market (like I have to tell you) and the country as a whole.

So I was well relieved to finally have it done with.  I celebrated New Year's Eve the way I usually do--watching the Doctor Who Christmas Special (which, bless its heart, certainly meant well but had moments which came dangerously close to the Inspector Spacetime Holiday Special seen on the NBC sitcom Community) with friends.  Together we followed Robert Burns instructions from Auld Lang Syne and drank a cup of kindness, which was when something occurred to me.

What now, or rather, what's next?  

Normally I'm not known for being much of a prognosticator, or even a good guesser for that matter, so you might well wonder what has triggered this bit of reflection on my part.   It was a conversation I had with someone a couple of weeks ago, someone half my age who's still working in retail every day.  Someone half my age who should still have boundless energy and enthusiasm who out of nowhere asked me out rather bleakly, "What kind of future do comics have?"

Given the year he'd just had I could sympathize with him, but it was still distressing to hear given how many times I've heard it before.  For years when people ruminated over "the future of comics" the general consensus was there really wasn't any; well, not one worth mentioning anyway.  As long as I've been alive the North American Comic Book has laid in state, snugly resting in its bag and board, its greatest proponents hosting a perpetual wake full of backhanded tributes about how wonderful it used to be.  The whole comic book industry, they kept saying, had another five years left in it, tops.

And they were wrong.  The whole dismal lot were wrong.  Yeahsayers such as myself went on to live in a world where comic books have permeated American pop culture in every conceivable way.  Just while writing this piece I casually flipped to the back cover of last week's issue of Entertainment Weekly and found an ad for Amazon's Kindle Fire.  There listed in alphabetical order right between children's and cook books under the category of "Millions of Books" were comic books.

And the thing is, the future isn't finished; there's more, there's always more.  There's an unlimited tomorrow coming, a world where comic books will be delivered to your email box every Wednesday morning.  If you prefer, you'll be able to stop at a mall kiosk and download an entire week of new releases or buy an e-reader that's not just specifically designed not just for reading comics but for writing, drawing and inking them as well.  And I know that there's all sorts of 'comic creator' software out there but I hope one day they'll be software so sophisticated and simple anyone can produce professional looking comics.  It'll be a boon for those of us who can’t scrawl a stick figure.

Those are just the things I can imagine; there will be no doubt be changes I can't even conceive of.  And I can't wait to see what they'll be.

All of that might seem like desperate cheerleading, seeing as how there's no evidence this year will be any better than last.  If anyone was wondering what part the direct sales market will play in this glorious pretend future of mine, well, I don't know, exactly.  Hopefully we'll always sell comics in some form.  Maybe we'll become wi-fi hubs with print on demand facilities so the serious collector can always have a hard copy back-up of their comics.  Others might focus on just graphic novels or superhero merchandise.

But it's something that we need to start seriously thinking about, now that comics are in the process of transitioning from print to digital. I don't delude myself that I can set the agenda for our industry but I would like to propose at this year's Retailer Summits we retailers have ourselves a summit.  Otherwise we could easily find that our place will be the same one the musicians who used to play for silent movies found themselves in when talkies arrived.

The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.