So San Diego Comic Con is over, and life goes on. I didn’t go, what with our budget being tight and me not really being a convention-goer in general. I have, though, been following quite diligently online, with Todd VanDerWerff’s coverage at the AV Club being my main source. (#Notatcomiccon nation, unite!)

So what was the biggest story coming out of the San Diego Comic Con? This: “Is Comic Con even for comics anymore?” The answer is no, no it is not. My wife, who is not a huge comic fan but is a die-hard Glee fan (or “Gleek,” if you will), had her faith temporary shaken when she realized the Glee crew were at the Comic Con. “Does this mean Glee is for nerds?” she asked me witheringly. She needn’t have worried. There are panels devoted to Community, Sons of Anarchy, and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, after all.

There’s a bit of the “nerds getting kicked out their own club by the cool kids” vibe going on, which, perhaps, is the natural order of things. “Know your role and shut your mouth,” as the Rock used to say. But, you know, the fact that this entire spectacle blossomed from the tiny kernel of comic fandom should tell you at least one thing: comic fans are a passionate bunch. Outside of Comic Con, look how much energy we spent reverse engineering Wonder Woman’s new outfit, or how we sneered at JMS for having Superman walk the Earth, or how we geeked out over the new Scott Pilgrim book.

If we lose the spiritual core of Comic Con, I guess us comic fans will have to slink back into the shadows and await the smaller cons, while poring over comic sites, blogs … and, yes, webcomics. While not as prevalent as gaming webcomics, webcomics about comics do exist. I’ve covered them before — the now defunct Year One (reviewed here), No Pink Ponies (reviewed here), and Let’s Be Friends Again (reviewed here). And now we get Comic Critics, written by Sean Whitmore and illustrated by Brandon Hanvey. The comic centers around some of the most irritable, snobby, and unpleasant people in the world: people who review comics.

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When Stephenie Meyer created Twilight, I doubt she knew that she was creating an unstoppable cultural juggernaut. Its effects range from the minute to the macroscopic. Small scale: a mother of two twittered us when she arrived in Forks, practically squealing with delight when she spotted a sign declaring that the city had “8.5 vampires.” Large scale: Borders bookstore is eliminating its CD and DVD section to create “Borders Ink,” a section largely designed to introduce teenage Twilight readers to similar novels and manga.

The series has attracted its share of criticism as well as controversy. While not referring to Twilight explicitly, Neil Gaiman stated that vampires needed to go back to their frightening ways in a recent article on EW.com. A while ago, The Beat practically blamed fanboys for being sexist by using a double-standard when they deal with Twilight fans. Frankly this surprised me, because in my experience the chief critics were female fans — such as Tasha Robinson and Genevieve Koski of the AV Club — who were more than a little insulted that the generally mature vampire genre was being hi-jacked by a Trapper Keeper friendly version that sparkled in sunlight.

Still, I think Twilight mockery is as viable a franchise as Twilight itself. While I have never read any of the books, I have been rather amused and entertained by the podcasts, articles, and blogs dedicated to why people hate Twilight. And Twilight hate is what introduced me to the subject of today’s Webcomic Overlook, Head Trip, written and illustrated by Amanda “Shinga” Bussell.

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