Chapter 2 Page 1

by on August 18, 2010 at 12:00 am
Posted In: Chapter 2: Yesler

Various Things

By Peter

Chapter 2 begins with Amanda’s beautiful rendition of taking the bus across Lake Washington on the 520 bridge. There are a number of surprises waiting for Joshua on the other side of that bridge.

In other Webcomic news, we are playing around with the favicon. That’s the little image you see in your browser next to the address bar when you go to a web page. Our first favicon was a red letter C, which you might have thought stood for “Coiled”, but in fact stands for “ComicPress”. We use ComicPress, which is a variation of WordPress for the website. Amanda’s been experimenting with spirals for the favicon, and we finally hit on one we really like. Reload the page with your  browser to see it.

Also, I am working on a Facebook page for Coiled. The idea is that some people might not like reading only one page a week, and so if they become fans of the page, they can get notified when a chapter is done, and read several pages at once. I’ll let you know when the page is ready, hopefully in the next couple of weeks.

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Chapter 1 Page 9

by on August 11, 2010 at 12:00 am
Posted In: Chapter 1: The Envelope

End of Chapter 1

By Peter

This concludes Chapter 1. It’s been exciting to see it get this far. The story will shift again in Chapter 2 as Joshua makes his way to the address on the envelope, and finds himself in the Seattle neighborhood of Yesler Terrace.

We’ve been pretty quiet about the comic up until now. We are starting to get the word out. If you like it, please tell everyone you know about it!

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Chapter 1 Page 8

by on August 4, 2010 at 12:00 am
Posted In: Chapter 1: The Envelope

By Peter

You may have noticed that we now have Google ads on our site. Google reads the content of our blog and then chooses ads for us. When you click on them, the advertiser gets charged a little and we get a cut of that. How much they charge and how much we get is a total mystery. Feel free to click on an ad if it interests you, but don’t do it just for the sake of earning us money. That’s against the rules.

Right now it’s clear that the Google algorithm has picked up on the fact that this is a comic and puts up ads that it thinks comic readers would be interested in. As the story gets further along and I start to write about specific scenes, we may see ads that are targeted more towards people who would like our particular story. Since the story itself is a series of images, Google can’t base its ad on the dialog.

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Chapter 1 Page 7

by on July 28, 2010 at 12:00 am
Posted In: Chapter 1: The Envelope

Nikola Tesla

By Peter

The life of Nikola Tesla, the Serbian-born inventor, weaves itself in and out of Coiled. I had stumbled on a biography of Tesla as a teenager, and became somewhat obsessed by this eccentric genius. One of his many inventions was the Tesla coil, which radiated electromagnetic waves with enough power to light up light bulbs at a distance, but which were harmless to people. (Well, at least as far as anyone could tell at the time.)

Tesla envisioned cities powered by Tesla coils. I was a teenager during the 1970s energy crisis, and I knew that a system that wasted so much energy was not practical. But I could imagine a space station powered by the sun, having more energy than it could ever know what to do with, using Tesla coils to provide energy to its inhabitants.

Now, what exactly is Space Station Tesla, and how did Joshua’s mother know about it so that she could tell Joshua bedtime stories? All in good time.

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Chapter 1 Page 6

by on July 21, 2010 at 12:00 am
Posted In: Chapter 1: The Envelope

Recommend Graphic Novels: Elsewhere Chronicles

By Peter

From Europe, there’s a very cool graphic novel series called The Elsewhere Chronicles by Nykko and Bannister. A girl’s grandfather passes away, and when she and her friends explore his old house, they find a device that opens a doorway into another world. That’s a common fantasy theme, but the Elsewhere Chronicles has some very imaginative aspects, including ghostly shadows that kill on contact, but can be driven away by light. (First use I’ve seen of a camera flash used as a weapon.) It’s up to Volume 4 now, published as a series of slim, full-color books. I’ve read up through Volume 3, which you can find in the Seattle Public Library.

Although very different from Coiled, the Elsewhere Chronicles are probably the closest I’ve seen to tone and audience that we are looking for.

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