Ziph Comics - Webcomics,Comic book art,Comics for sale and Free comic books.

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WEBCOMICS
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"The Adventures of Prince Ziph" is a free comics online ebook for
those who love fantasy stories and care particulary to read this one set on Mars.
It´s filled with 200 pages of original watercolor and colored pencil comic book art.
If you´re a Coast to Coast Am, fan, like Art Bell, the "Face on Mars" and Richard Hoagland
I can bet you´ll find it particulary interesting as most of the plot was based on many of those topics.
You can download the low-res version of this comics ebook for free here, but this graphic novel is also available for sale on hardcover and paperback books. Visit the store and put a copy on your comics shelve today. ;)

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Click to open or Right-Click + "Save as" to save it.

What´s all this about then ? ... Are you just crazy or what ?

Traditionaly hand made comics
All original comic art was rendered in ink, watercolors, acrylics and color pencils with a touch of digital here and there to correct some colors.
This new (and final) version of the first adventure took five years to complete. I´ve started working on it in 2004 and finished in 2009.


	20 years in the making. The story of Ziph Comics.


	Learn about how this independent comics that i´ve imagined in 1987 and see how this project has changed through out the years and over its subsequent versions.



	Chapter 1: Once upon a time in the late 80´s with no Internet and no cellphones either... THE FIRST VERSION. In late 1987, early 1988 when i was seventeen years old, I had just read Tolkien´s - "The Hobbit" and i also wanted to try to do my fantasy story with non human heros. So coming up with this fantasy concept was my teenage attempt in creating my very own fantasy world wich later i expanded when working in more recent children book type illustrations like the one below wich was important in developing the modern version of my fantasy comics.


	But, going back to the 80´s, my idea back then was to do the Fantasy Portuguese equivalent of the Asterix adventures (by Gosciny & Uderzo). A character you may well know if you´re into European graphic novels. Not so much if you live in England or in America though... I always loved the humor and style of those albuns, and i wanted to try to bring that style of humor into my own fantasy world. A world very much inspired by The Hobbit (Tolkien), by The Wizard of EarthSea (Ursula Le Guin) and specialy by The Neverending Story novel (Michael Ende). Those novels along with the original 1984 movie "The Neverending Story" (see trailer) was what motivated me to learn how to draw my own fantasy worlds, of wich you can see an early example below. This pic later became the basis for the world of Thorondor where my Martian character Prince Ziph lives and was recolored many times as it´s one of my favorites pieces of my work.


	And so i started to draw this story, just as a test, not only to my limited art skills, but also to see if i could create a unique world enviroment and original looking non-human characters to go along with those imaginary geographies. This being a test for myself, back then I decided to learn how to color these comics stuff too, so i bought the cheapest pencils i could find and afford at the time and went for it. Bellow is one of the first pages I ever tried to color and wich have been "completed" back in 1987-88.


	By this time, i was starting to have an idea for the story, but i still needed a main character, and so my idea was to create a rebel teen guy wich was basicaly everything that a Prince shouldn´t be. I always liked anti-heros and i wanted to have one in my story but with humor and personality and off course not human at all. And so thus was born Prince Ziph.
	I thought another good idea was to create a character (and a race) based on spiders. Most people hate spiders so, what better look for an anti-hero ? It would be a good challenge to do a character like that and have people relate to him despite his spider-looking characteristics. Initialy these spider characters were suposed to have eight legs, but soon i found out that would be chaos to draw, useless for any plot and time consuming. So Prince Ziph ended up with only four legs. Later on i had the idea of teaming him up with the floating weird looking bald wizard you see on the first page and so the characters of Ziph and his friend and quest companion Wiz were born. This first version of this comics project, was never completed. And that´s about it, for the condensed history of the first version for The Adventures of Prince Ziph. If you haven´t already, visit the official website for this work, look for the "About the Work" section and see the complete set of pages for the first version of this old teenage atempt of mine to create comics. So check out the 1987-88 version before reading the rest of this project history next. ;)



	Chapter 2: 1992 the second try. First ever complete version but still in black and white.

	THE SECOND VERSION. Back in 1992 i decided to remake my old 1988 Ziph story to enter a national comics competition. I had a tight deadline to come up with something and so i thought it would save me some time if adapted my early efforts with the adventures of Ziph, rather than creating something new from scratch. This time i did complete the whole story and everything took me about 50 pages to do it.


	This 1992 version was completed in less than five weeks and despite its amateur style it ended up getting a special prize in the competition. The maximum number of pages to apply had been of 5 and i sent 50. They had to notice me. This version ended up being published in a couple of magazines because of that. Meanwhile at the same time, i started my professional career in Graphic Design in this same year and so I abandoned the making of Comics as back then as it is still now, Portugal has no market for comics, much less for national comics and I had to pay my bills doing something else for a living, so I designed hospitaly software for a while and worked in general illustration projects.

	If you haven´t already, visit the official website for this work, look for the "About the Work" section and see the complete set of pages for the second version of this Ziph comics. So check out the 1996 version before reading the rest of this project history next. ;)




	Chapter 3: 1996, now in color.

	THE THIRD VERSION I decided to create this version, just as another test. If i ever wanted to do this story as i imagined it, i needed to learn how to use color to achieve the results i had inside my imagination. At that time i was experimenting with color pencils and so i decided to try and create a full color version, but with drawings based on the last black & white version of 92 because i didn´t wanted to create another version from scratch. It was by that time that i noticed the colors i choosed for my Prince Ziph character were exactly the colors from the Portuguese flag. Nice coincidence, but totaly non planned, altough it works great because i´m Portuguese. I also had the idea of trying to divide the whole 50 pages story into several publishable episodes and this was an atempt to see how and if this would work. Meanwhile a new comics competition appeared in Portugal. I sent this version to apply, but the competition closed for unexpected reasons and the organizers stole my originals (it´s a long story). It was the first and the last time i ever sent originals anywhere. Specialy to Portuguese organized things like this.


	If you haven´t already, visit the official website for this work, look for the "About the Work" section and see the complete set of pages for the second version of this Ziph comics. So check out the 1996 version before reading the rest of this project history next. ;)

	Chapter 4: 2004-2009 And now for something completely diferent... The Final version.

	THE FOURTH and FINAL VERSION After 1996 I had my graphic design career to think of and so there was no time for comics anymore. Altough everytime i had a chance to create fantasy works and do some illustration work i grabbed it. Through the years, people told me that many of my illustrations seemed to tell a story and that they would like to see more of it. Actualy my fantasy images are always based on story concepts that i imagine while creating the pictures and wich i archive mentaly for future use. Meanwhile, people kept asking me for comics, and so in 2004 i decided that it was time to create the version of "The Adventures of Prince Ziph" - i always wanted to do. And so this is it. The old test made in 1988, is now a 200+ page full color saga. All created in watercolor, inks and color pencils after five years of work. The first four pages were made in late 2004, then i stopped working on it for two years more. I went back in 2006 and did all the sketch pencil work for all the 200 pages. The whole color work for this new version was done between early 2006 and July of 2009 on most of the pages. Many changes were made in several pages and i have some diferent versions for a few of them but now this project is finished and i´m already working on a new book with more Ziph adventures. Download the free Pdfs in 6 Chapters to check out the whole book.

	And this is it. I hope you enjoyed learning more about this project and so let me tell you that soon i´ll be starting to work on another comics adventure for Prince Ziph wich i plan to have ready to print in about 16 months from now, or so...it takes a lot of time to create these things. Meanwhile, do not forget to read the first adventure and keep visiting this page for more news about this saga. The english hardcover book edition for this first 200 page adventure, will be available in early December, if you care to buy it. Meanwhile only the Portguese hardcover book is available for sale, as i´m still translating the whole story into english. Thanks for all the support everybody ! Luis Peres 11-10-2010

	I leave you with a sneak peek at a new sketch i did for one of the new characters in the next adventure of Prince Ziph. Meet Surfer Slug.



	More sketches coming soon. Stay tuned. ;)

Well... let me see... If you´re looking for free ebooks online, you found one. ;)
It´s a fantasy story set on Mars millions of years ago and the begining of a much larger webcomics saga wich i have had inside my imagination and that i´ve tried to develop in a more professional way for 20 years now. I tells all about the ancient story of planet Mars, the origins of life on earth and subsequent unknown alternative earth history in a funny and cartoony way.

The idea was to take all of my favorite ancient mysteries and forbidden archeology topics, turn everything into comic book drawings and combine them into some sort of "The Hobbit/The Neverending Story" type of atmosphere with a touch of "Asterix" throwned in to give it some cartoon chaos and anarchic humor.

Have you ever wondered ... How Mars was like, millions of years ago ? Is the "Face on Mars" for real ? If so, who built it and was that a joke ? What´s the meaning of Life ? Does GOD have a beard ?
Does anyone cares ? Who´s the real Santa Claus ? Is there Life after Death ? Is it boring as hell ?
Is Heaven just for regular costumers and is there a "Facebook" in the Afterllife ? Who controls the Universe and does that Entity have any weekends off ? If not...Why not ?

ORIGINAL PENCIL WORK
As many people enjoy looking at the early stages of this type of work, here´s a few pages still in pencil sktech ready to be inked and later colored with watercolors.
Click here to view

DIFERENT VERSIONS FOR SOME PAGES
Because i never plan a page or do any initial sketches, many times i end up with pages that i think do not work at all and completly suck. So naturaly, i end up having to remake what i don´t like and in this graphic novel this was no exception. Here´s a few examples of how some pages were like in early versions compared to the final ones now.
Click here to view

COVER SKETCH BOOK
Altough i don´t plan my comics and i make things as i go along, when it comes to create a cover for the book i´m one of those comic book artists that likes to make sure the cover really works and so i allow myself an exception and i usualy do lots of sketches to plan the cover illustration.
Click here to view my comic book covers.

The Art Bell
Coast to Coast Am influence

If you´ve never heard of Coast to Coast Am, and you love unknown mysteries, well i guess you should check it out imeditately, listen to a couple of thousands of hours from it, become addicted to the show, get to know their guests by heart and then comeback here to read my free fantasy comics again.
I guarantee you´ll read everything i created for this webcomics from a whole new angle. ;)

From Coast to Coast...
If you already know about and you´re a fan of Coast to Coast Am, currently hosted by George Noory, Ian Punnet, George Knapp and Art Bell himself, you know how can this radio show change the direction of your life once you get into the fascinating subjects it talks about on a daily basis.

Because of this, there´s a Prince Ziph comic book, before and another after i discovered this radio program. It´s because of Coast to Coast that now my story has 200 pages instead of the original 50 once had on its first version when it was just a typical Lord of the Rings clone with humor, more than twenty years ago.

It all changed when about ten years ago i discovered the Art Bell radio show and

my imagination was caught from the first time i listened to guests like Richard Hoagland or the late Dr Tom Van Flandern talking about the face on Mars for example just to name a couple of the most memorable interviews i´ve listened to on this show and wich gave me plenty of material to take my original comic book art and prince Ziph fantasy story in a whole new direction for the definitive new and modern version you now can read and buy the hardcover book on this website.

Those who are regulars listeners to the show will probably recognize that plenty of characters and situations on my comics were based on some of the most memorable topics and guests that appeared on the radio over these years.

From Michio Kaku to...JC !
As if the "Face on Mars" and also the work of another guest Dr.Charles Shults about the existence of fossils on the red planet, wasn´t enough to give me tons of new material to add some great speculative elements to my comic book project, then the scientist
Michio Kaku became a regular guest on the show also and from that moment on i knew my imagination would take the Prince Ziph adventure into the realm of Quantum Physics and that was what got me into creating a "God" like character to take the story into a complete new direction from the earlier versions.

boiling pits of sewage

On the other hand, and in a complete oposite spectrum of any scientific view, one day during some open-lines program at Coast a guy that became known just as "JC" (for Jesus Christ...if you can believe that), called the show and after listening to him the first time, i knew i had to also find a way of adding a character based on this guy into my story. And why, you ask ?...Well, just listen to any of this clips taken from the show:

JC Clip 1 - JC Clip 1 - JC Clip 3 - JC Clip 4 - JC Clip 5 - JC Clip 6 - JC Clip 7 - JC Clip 8

Altough there was no way i could replicate something as funny as this guy , JC ended up inspiring me for another caharacter, simply because it had to be there. And if you think this man can´t be real, at least everybody on the show always swore this is a real person an not just some put on. The guy even has his own blog ! More on this here.

Ufos, adbuctees and greys
That outer space bit of the adventure of Prince Ziph with the Aliens and the Greys, was also my way of inserting some of the things i was inspired by while listening to the Coast to Coast interviews of researchers like the late John Mack and the very much alive Stanton Friedman and Linda Moulton Howe ,whose work also played a major role in my imagination when dreaming this definitive version of my graphic novel.

Richard C. Hoagland and the Ruins on Mars.
My character of Dr.Barsoom is a mix between an homage to Richard C. Hoagland one of the more fascinating, attacked and controversial Mars investigators (to say the least) and to the Martian novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs, about the adventures of John Carter of Mars wich in the books is called "Barsoom".

hoagland character

There was so much i could tell about the work of Richard Hoagland (now also with Mike Bara), that i used my character of Dr.Barsoom in the comics to sort of translate into my fantasy world the strugle the real person has been having for more than 30 years now, to bring awareness to what could be waiting for us on Mars.
His interviews on Coast and the books Dark Mission and Monuments of Mars, were a major influence on my imagination i had to put my own version of Hoagland somewhere in my story too.
Link 1 - Link 2 - Link 3 - Link 4 - Link 5 - Link 6 - Link 7 - Link 8 - Link 9 - Link 10 - Link 11 - Link 12 - Link 13 - Link 14 - Link 15 - Link 16

Riley & Martin.
The characters of the grey typical aliens Riley and Martin on the Adventures of Prince Ziph are also a good example of the importance of Coast to Coast Am to the creation of my comics.

abductee

Both are based on another topic and guest that appeared on the radio show. A guy wich actualy is called Riley Martin and it´s also a good example of some guests that once in a while are also interviewed on the show.
And that´s the fascinating thing about this interview show; as in one night it can interview a serious scientist like
Dr Seth Shostak from Seti and in the next night get into a conversation with someone like Riley Martin wich you can also get a glimpse here also..
If you already read my comic book, by now you might have guessed why i named my alien characters Riley & Martin. They simply had to be !

Forbidden Archeology as the basis for the world of Prince Ziph comics.
Originaly my comics were going to be just 50 pages long, but as i listened (and read) about the forbidden archeology subject (Sitchin, Michael Cremo , Graham Hancock , Jason Martell , David Hatcher Childress, Erik von Daniken) , these theories became a big part of the glue that holds my Prince Ziph fantasy world togheter and will even become more evident on subsequent new albuns with the further adventures of my characters wich i plan to draw in the next few years.

So to those readers looking for comic book websites wich ask me where do i come up with all this stuff for my free online comics story, there you have it !
It all started just as pure Lord of the rings stuff more than 20 years ago, but now became probably the only forbidden archeology fantasy themed graphic novel in the world created totaly with watercolors by one single person painting by hand over a period of five years.

The Aventures of Prince Ziph - New Adventure - Character sketches.
Small preview of what i´m creating for a new book wich i expect to start drawing in 2011.
Click here to view these sketches

sketch comics comics webcomic comic robots

If you enjoy this types of subjects here´s a list of my favorite books (and audio books) wich totaly inspired me while creating this graphic novel. And by the way, if you´re looking to hire some comic book artists, and you like my illustration style, let me know. ;)
Bibliography: (science/forbidden archeology) Monuments of Mars - Dark Mission - Fingerprints of the Gods - The Cosmic War - Who Built the Moon ? - Parallel Universes - The Holographic Universe - Cosmos - The Fabric of the Cosmos - The Universe Next Door - The God Delusion - The Mars Mystery - Forbidden Archeology - The Sirius Mystery - The 12th Planet - Is there Life after Death ? - The Barney & Betty Hill Story - Extraterrestrial Archeology - Chariots of the Gods - Worker in the Light - Alien Agenda - Human encounters with Aliens - 13 Things that don´t make sense - (novels fantasy/sci-fi) The Neverending Story - A Wizard of Earthsea - The Hobbit - The Lord of the Rings - Rendez-vouz-with-Rama - Rama II - Garden of Rama - Rama Revealed - Sati - Contact - Last and First Men - The Starlight Crystal - Starmaker - The Time Travellers Wife - Project Pope - Dune - (audio books) BBC´s The Lord of the Rings - BBC´s The Hobbit - BBC´s A Wizard of Earthsea - EarthSearch - (movies) Blade Runner - Star Wars - The Big Blue - The Neverending Story - Legend - Starchaser - Starcrash - Humanity´s End - Titan A.E. - Intruders - The Flight of Dragons - The Lord of the Rings - XFiles (documentaries) Ancient Aliens - Cosmos - (Talk Radio) Coast-to-Coast am - The Unexplained.

< scroll down to read more.

If you haven´t yet, download and read my comics for free.

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