Coiled Comics

Recommended Graphic Novels
By Peter

I’m finding it’s not easy to come up with something new to say each week. I thought I’d take some time to recommend some graphic novels that are good for the same age range as Coiled. Let me start with Kukuburi by Ramon Perez.
Kukuburi is the story of a young woman who works as a delivery girl. She is delivering an ordinary package when she suddenly passes into a surreal world filled with flying sea creatures and other extraordinary creatures. She finds she has friends in this world, and a connection to her childhood, but she also has an enemy – a well-dressed, sunglasses-wearing skeleton. Why she is there and what she is trying to accomplish is secondary to the extraordinary visual atmosphere of the comic.
Kukuburi exists only on the Web. It’s free, and updated whenever the author has time to do it. He is in demand as a professional artist, so sometimes there are long breaks where there are no updates. But it’s worth the wait.

The origin of Coiled, part 2.

By Peter

In 2005, I was teaching at the Yesler Terrace community center computer lab, and I would always arrive half an hour early to set up. Once I was set up, I would hang out and watch the room. Most of the people looked like they were from East Africa, and a few looked like they were from South East Asia. Adults were checking email or working on resumes. Kids were working on homework or playing computer games.

But there was one white guy who was sometimes there. He was in his fifties and wore large glasses, like the kind that were popular in the 1970s. I just couldn’t figure out what he was working on. His screen was filled with a series of brightly colored triangles, and he would slowly adjust their shape and size.

I began to speculate. What if he were doing computer research, right here in a public computer lab? It used to be that in order to do research, you needed a special high-tech lab. But that’s no longer true. You just need a computer, and it doesn’t even have to be your own.

What would drive a person to work on a high-tech research project in a public computer lab? Surely someone with that kind of experience would have enough money to buy his own computer. But maybe he’s hiding out from someone, and the last place someone would look would be in public housing. My imagination started to go a little wild.

Eventually I went over and talked to the guy. It turns out he was doing 3D, stereoscopic animation. It was pretty cool and unusual, but not exactly a technological breakthrough. Still, I had already begun to think of a story where a computer scientist would end up at the Yesler Terrace computer lab, working on technology that could change the world.

Welcome to Coiled! Coiled is a graphic novel by Peter Gruenbaum and Amanda Kingsley, with new pages published on this website every week.

Coiled is cyber-fiction that takes place in present-day Seattle’s Central District, home to many East African immigrant families. Joshua, a boy from the suburb of Redmond, is on a mission to find his mother, who suddenly disappeared from his life. He traces her path to the neighborhood of Yesler Terrace, and then eventually into an extraordinary virtual world, populated by soldiers, computer scientists, and a mysterious black jaguar.

Coiled is illustrated in two styles: the virtual world is drawn in shades of gray, and the real world is drawn with pen and ink.

Why the name Coiled? That’s for you to find out. But here’s a hint: it refers to an invention created by Thomas Edison’s biggest rival.