Pictures from the 2015 Comic-Con International, part 2: Wednesday (Art of Comic-Con exhibit, the Walking Dead and more!)

We're back with more pictures from Comic-Con!  It's September!  Whatever.  Here we go!

Wednesday night in San Diego is Preview Night.  Lots of people arrive in the city on this day, but in doing so I think they miss getting a chance - a few hours, anyway - to see some of the other things going on in conjunction with the convention.  There's never enough time to see everything at Comic-Con, but arriving a little bit early gives you some time during the buildup to the big storm.  Before getting in to the convention center, I stopped by the new San Diego public library, located on the other side of Petco Park.

The library is barely a year old, but they're already coordinating events with Comic-Con, and I can see the location becoming more ingrained in years to come.  There were a few panels and exhibits there this year, but I'd imagine that will increase greatly in the near future.

One exhibit that coincided with the convention was "The Art of Comic-Con", the library's rooftop display of original art and items related to the last 45 years of Comic-Con in San Diego.  The gallery is small, but it still held a number of great, rare and what I imagine to be very expensive pieces, such as this giant original drawing from Sergio Aragones.

Original cover art from the different programs took up the better part of one wall.  This was one of my favorites.

Here's a shot of one side of the gallery.  On the far left are some light pole banners from years past.

I saw this weeks after the UHF screening in Pittsburgh.  Nice.

The new library is such a beautiful place.  I can't wait until there are more events held there.

After leaving the library, it was time to head back to the convention center.  I was able to get into the hall a few minutes early, thanks to some friends with exhibitor badges.  As you walked in to the lobby, you could see one of these photo opportunities right along the wall by the Hall D entrance.  It was a popular spot and I'm sure there are about 100 other pictures similar to this one.  I'll accept it.

The convention center surprisingly - and without much warning - opened a half hour early this year.  This caught me off guard and I was scrambling to get to where I needed to be as attendees flooded the area.  My wife and brother-in-law, incredibly enough, made it into the elusive Hasbro line on Preview Night for the first time in four years, despite having early entrance to the hall in three of those.  I made my way to the Mattel booth, where I was able to pick up the coin you see above, a "Skeletoken", which served as an entrance fee to the He-Man-themed "Skeletor's Lair" offsite store.  It's one of the coolest things I brought back with me from the show.

It wasn't long before the convention hall was packed.

The Walking Dead once again had a big presence at the show, including this recreation of a particularly gruesome scene from the fifth season.

And like last year, zombies roamed the display area, and followed those brave enough to wait a while in line into the trailer in the background.

Here's a diverse group of sci-fi fans!

Nintendo took up a bunch of space near the end of the hall, with a big display and playable versions of the new Mario Maker game, which looks like a lot of fun and probably means that I'll be getting a WiiU at some point before the year is over.

Adult Swim had a bean bag toss game for prizes on the floor to go along with their outside space.

And, of course, the Tick booth had set up again in its usual spot.

The booth was busy for most of the convention, which was nice to see.  The newest Tick issue debuted at the show and it did well.

The day was over at 9:00, and then it was time to explore the city just a bit before heading back to get ready for Thursday.  The line for Skeletor's Lair was incredibly long (people waited upwards of five hours to get in), so we decided to put that off until later.

This is my brother-in-law.  It kind of looks like he's eating bugs off the grill of this Jurassic Park vehicle.

This was an interesting piece of street art we saw while walking back to our car at night.  As I'll show later, there were these different variations on Bart Simpson painted on a number of different objects on this street corner, with the phrase "Bart Club" on most of them.  I've tried to look up something about them since then, but I haven't had any luck.  It's weird, but neat.  I wonder what it's all about?

That's it for Wednesday.  Thursday is coming up.