What’s up my fellow nerds? Today I bring you a report of a sublimely nerdy experience: Emerald City Comicon (ECCC)—one of the largest comic conventions in the country, held right in my hometown of Seattle! This event is a favorite of cosplayers, comic book fiends, board and video game masters, and all the other hobbies that would make the tri-lambdas drool. But what you might not have known is that LEGO has become an integral aspect of the con now for many years.

The glorious Brick Nation mosaic by Melissa Rekve

In fact, one of the first times I attended ECCC (2014), just a year or so before I got back into serious MOC building, I happened upon the LEGO group there at a huge sprawling table layout with massive creative builds galore! Little did I know that a few years later I’d be part of the local LEGO community and putting my own MOCs on display.

A picture I took of the LEGO display back in 2014!

That year I wore my Buzz Lightyear costume to the con for a good portion of the day, and it was a blast stopping to take photos with people and being more of a display piece myself.

Me as Buzz in 2014 with my pal Tim as Woody, and some random brilliant Halo cosplayer!

So to mark the passing of another wonderful ECCC experience, I thought I’d report a bit on my experience of ECCC, then I’ll chat about the LEGO display, and finally, I’ll introduce you to one of the builders who really wowed me and the crowd with all his builds (especially a really nifty Dr. Strange build that didn’t need size to really shine), Josh Parkinson. Actually, once we got to chatting we ended up covering too much to get into here so tune in later for a full builder showcase article on Josh coming soon!

Emerald City Comicon

Diving into ECCC, the experience this year picked up right where my prior con visits left off. The displays were vibrant, the event sprawled with energy across multiple buildings and floors, and the crowd was jubilant and costumed like you wouldn’t believe!

ECCC giant letters for the perfect photo op!

I didn’t spend as much time traversing the halls this year as in prior visits, mainly due to my commitment to help proctor at the LEGO tables and also due to my lack of free time because my MOC building for the upcoming BrickCon LEGO convention in Seattle is running very very late! But the amount of time aside, my several walkthroughs were rewarded by a feast for the eyes of so many wonderfully nerdy things.

If you haven’t been to a con like this, there are massive halls filled to the brim with stalls and tables with artists and craftspeople selling their wares. There are big presentation rooms with movie and TV stars and other personalities like talented cosplayers giving talks and presentations on a wide variety of topics. There are references to all manner of pop culture properties—some things that I don’t understand and plenty I do—be they in poster form, comics, costumes, or other. There’s a desk selling ECCC-specific swag, there are costume contests, a whole room dedicated to cosplay logistics, wonderment beaming out of many an eye, and much much more.

To be frank, my walk throughs were all at “off times,” so I can’t comment as to the crowd this year vs. other years, but I still saw a LOT of happy people wandering inside and nearby outside the con. With that all said, here’s a gallery of some photo-worthy items I captured:

Brick Nation

This year marks my second appearance displaying MOCs with the “Brick Nation”—the moniker of this motley and most definitely talented AFOL crew. For an introduction, I thought I’d go straight to the source and ask RJ Coughlin (the ringleader of Brick Nation for SeaLUG) to speak a little about this awesome group.

Doug: Hey RJ, can you tell us when the "Brick Nation" started? And is it anything official or just a fun moniker for the crew that comes to ECCC?

RJ: SeaLUG started displaying at ECCC in 2012. This was before ReedPOP owned it—ECCC was originally a locally owned and operated company. We were invited by the owner, Jim Demonakos, through one of his friends who was a SeaLUG member.

We just were SeaLUG displayers for 2012 and 2013. In 2014, we officially became the Brick Nation, a part of ECCC's Family HQ. The name was completely created by the Local ECCC team. They had some great signage for us and even a set of custom minifigs created. It was a limited run of 500 for the pair and so cool. They sold out the first day!

Doug: Have you been in charge of the display this whole time or did you take the mantle from another?

RJ: On this event, I report and work directly with ReedPOP. Although I have been involved since the beginning, I have had lots of support from SeaLUG members over the years to make the Brick Nation display successful. It's a lot of work soliciting and vetting the best of the best MOCs to showcase. There is also planning and coordination for layout space and MOC placement, proctor scheduling, and panels when requested. Plus, planning activities and vendors to complement our space when requested.

Doug: How'd you think this year went vs other years?

RJ: Despite COVID, I think that it went really well! Attendance was down from previous years, but the Brick Nation continues to draw large numbers of people who like and appreciate the builds that we bring. The ReedPOP staff at ECCC must agree as well—we have already been invited back to participate in 2023!

Just a taste of the awesome train layout!

Thanks to RJ for providing the history and helpful info!

On Display

As for my experience, I spent a couple of days hanging and proctoring at the LEGO tables, and it was a blast! I enjoyed chit-chatting with my fellow AFOLs and got to spend time with not only some old friends but some I hadn’t known well before the con. This year I brought two MOCs: the first is a Wheel of Time MOC—the Seanchan Greatship. And the second is a MOC from the video game Star Citizen—my Anvil Ballista missile truck. Plus, I even busted out the Buzz costume for the first time in years to celebrate the release of the new Lightyear movie! (Read BrickNerd’s awesome interview with the director Angus MacLane and you can see why I’m excited to hear his keynote at BrickCon in a month.)

A little scuffed up, but still going strong!

I wanted to note the fun fact that back in 2014, I bumped into the LEGO R2-D2 built by Shawn and Lara Steele—and he’s still going strong as of 2022, now joined by a bunch of other fantastic motorized RC droids! 2014 picture on the left, and 2022 on the right.

There were a ton of really brilliant MOCs as always this year, so I’ll share a gallery of some shots I took of the builds. I’ll never be able to capture them all, but there are highlights from a lot of great genres.

I really enjoy spending time with this rascally crew, and I’ll leave this section with an image of the group in all our glory just before tear down on Sunday!

Something Strange

Speaking of awesome talented people, let’s talk about Josh Parkinson, one of the builders who I didn’t know well before, but got to chat quite a bit with at the con. He may be a quiet-spoken individual, but his builds don’t need a verbal introduction—they are brilliant and stand completely on their own. I was particularly drawn in by his vignette of Dr. Strange creating a portal from (presumably) the Sanctum to some distant snowy mountain top fortress! This build is compact but packs such a visual punch that it immediately drew my eye and throughout the con I noticed practically every visitor to the LEGO table stop to bend down and look through the portal for themselves!

Mesmerizing! As they walked by, everyone bent over to get this really cool view!

As I mentioned above, I asked Josh some questions for the article and once we got to chatting the result was a really interesting story that’s more of a builder feature, so I’ll put a pin in most of it and share that with you all soon as my next article, so stay tuned!

For now, to keep the focus on ECCC, it turns out this was Josh’s first ECCC—so let’s hear from a first-timer about his experience!

Doug: So this was your first ECCC—how did you like it?

Josh Parkinson: As my first Emerald City Comic Con, and my first comic con in a very long time, it was pretty amazing. Especially being part of the Brick Nation exhibit at the same time. The con itself was full of so much creativity. The artists and cosplayers brought so much amazing creative work. The craftsmanship and cleverness of the costumes endlessly fascinated me. The incredible amount of talented artists in “Artist Alley” as well as in the main Exhibitor Hall were completely consuming. Those two primarily occupied my attention every day. And somehow, I still managed to find amazing new things or new artists I missed before, right up through the last day. I managed to attend a few of the Main Stage panels that were thoroughly entertaining, including the original TMNT voice cast and The Mummy reunion.

The game area was enticing, but I didn’t manage to really take advantage of that as much, despite my love of board games. Truth is, I was more fascinated by the artists and cosplayers, or helping man the Brick Nation tables with my fellow builders. However, the arcade was the main disappointment for me. I mean five or six pinball machines and a few video emulators in a small room was not my idea of an arcade for something the size of ECCC.

But exploring the creative work, connecting with the artists, indulging in some panels, and participating in Brick Nation and the incredible group of MOC builders—that’s what really made it for me. And truth is, this is such an opportunity for comic cons with AFOLs. They could all benefit from partnering with LUGs to have pop culture MOCs exhibited in their shows, engage their audiences, and give new ways for fans to express themselves.

Doug: Thanks for the interview Josh! And here’s a gallery of the four builds you brought to the show (we’ll talk more about them in the full interview article coming soon!):

On a final fun side note, one of the AFOLs in Brick Nation let us know that a ReedPop employee did a writeup of the Brick Nation display for the site Popverse, so the LEGO word spreads further out into the world of nerd-dom!

And that wraps up the tour of ECCC and Brick Nation. I hope you all are inspired to find a local con and nerd out like we did at ECCC—it’s just a blast! Let us know in the comments if you have a good LEGO + comic con story. And as Josh suggested, more cons could use a little ABS in their lives, so let’s make that happen!

What comic cons do you go to that also feature LEGO? Let us know in the comments!

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