Comic-Con was this past weekend (as if anyone on a social networking site didn’t know). I wasn’t there, but two years ago I covered it for an L.A. Pop Culture site and already I could see the wave had hit.

Walking alongside a host of aliens, Spiderman, Wonder Woman, and other characters I couldn’t begin to name was another strange character – the Hollywood hipster. He was everywhere – perusing the stands, taking meetings, and status updating all the live-long-day.

As with almost anything Hollywood Hipsters do, it was much more about being able to say they were there than really caring for the event itself. Sure, Comic-Con has encouraged the changes by opening themselves up to a lot more mainstream TV and film panels, but still it’s supposed to be the playground for the nerdy – the one place they had to themselves only once a year. One of my FB friends summarized the change well: “Now it is sold out, taken over by the beautiful people.”

The honest truth is that while Comic-Con is attracting more mainstream audiences – like fans of Lost or, gasp, Twilight – it’s alienating its real core audience – comic book fans. There’s less giveaways, less comic book writers and illustrators are showing up, less time is spent talking to aspiring artists or true comic readers. And let’s face it, when the hipsters are over it (and they will be, please see MySpace or Chuck or Pushing Daisies), then it’ll be this core audience that the convention will rely on. But what’ll happen if they’ve pissed them off with another year of pandering to the beautiful people? It may be the end of days.