I think when it comes down to it, so much of geek obsession is arrested adolesence. If twelve is the golden age of science fiction, then geeks are people who never leave their twelve year old tastes entirely behind.
And I think that's really why so much geek culture is doing well at the box office. Summer blockbuster films are perpetually adolescent, and geeks love a ton of things that were tailored for adolescents to begin with and work just as well for adolescents when translated to the big screen.
The problem is as well, obviously, that geeks may love many of the things they did at twelve, but they are no longer twelve: Their interests in geeky pursuits - sci-fi, fantasy, etc. - can well have taken more unusual, less mainstream friendly turns. Batman is easy to market to the general public and a mass of kids, Scott Pilgrim, perhaps, not as much (and didn't loom that appealing to me, either).
So this decision doesn't really surprise me. Besides, more pragmatically, the idea of a con just seems so... outmoded. Since when do we go outside anymore? Geekdom has conquered the interwebs, if I wanted to appeal to geeks I'd head there - and indeed, when one sees that there are quite often professional people in various nodes of geek interest promoting their product, it seems not too unsensible an idea.
