What if the Bible, a text-based book, were fashioned into a graphic novel, where bold illustrations are the driving force of the narrative? And why would that be an appealing project to undertake? How would it help fight Bible illiteracy?

Bible Gateway interviewed Art Ayris (@artayris) about The Kingstone Bible (Kingstone Media Group, 2016).

[Read the Bible Gateway Blog post, The Word for WORD Bible Comic: An Interview with Simon Amadeus Pillario]

[Also see other illustrated Bibles in the Bible Gateway Store, such as The Manga Bible, The Manga Bible NLT, The Manga Bible Series, The Action Bible, and The Lion Graphic Bible]

Explain what The Kingstone Bible is.

Art Ayris: In the most simplistic terms it’s the most complete graphic adaptation of the Bible ever done. It’s a complete, 2,000 page serialization of the Bible that’s available in three hard covers, or via 12 softcovers and digital or 30 plus individual comic books.

How popular is the general comic book genre?

Art Ayris: A lot of it of course is driven by the super hero mega-flicks, but the genre itself continues to expand domestically—42% in the last five years (as reported by Comichron). But US comic sales pale to the foreign market. All US comic sales are approaching $1 billion, but in Japan alone they’re $5 billion. The French comics Asterix has sold over 200 million copies.

Is there danger in placing the Bible in the graphic novel category, as if the Bible were nonfiction?

Art Ayris: There are a lot of non-fiction graphic novels out there and Kingstone is also ramping up the non-fiction side of graphic novels. The graphic novel term could be a turn off for some, but our emphasis is more on the graphic portion. But the bigger issue for us is that we see it being an attractive portal for some into more substantive Bible reading.

What need in society did you see that prompted you to publish this work?

Art Ayris: The overarching factor was descending Bible reading among Millennials with an even deeper descent among teens. And on the other hand, the rapidly (and continued) growing popularity of comics and the whole graphic novel genre. It would prick my soul to walk into Books-a-Million on Friday nights and see the kids just sprawled out on the floor reading some pretty not-so-spiritually-healthy materials.

What was the process in creating The Kingstone Bible?

Art Ayris: It took us a little over seven years and about 45 illustrators. My watermark for inclusion into the artist line-up was whether or not they had Marvel or DC experience. A number of Christian artists began contacting us when they heard we were doing this graphic version, but the cut for me had to be whether or not they had previously excelled in the comics industry. Probably about 95% of the artists all had major comic house experience before joining our team.

Since it’s not a comprehensive rendering of the Bible, how did you select the content from the Bible to fashion into this graphic presentation?

Art Ayris: This is pretty comprehensive as we cover every book of the Bible. But as you know, certain content is covered in more than one place in the Bible (for example, 1 Kings and 2 Kings, 1 Chronicles and 2 Chronicles, etc.) so we were able to synthesize. One thing I think we did really well was serialize the entire Bible. Someone—even a novice to religion who had never read the Bible—could sit down and read through the three volumes and within weeks would be able to understand the main stories and a number of the key themes—and hopefully comprehend the main narrative: God’s Messiah.

Who’s the target reader you’re aiming at and why?

Art Ayris: We aim at pre-teen to young adults. Though males 19-29 is still our top social media demographic, we’re seeing a growing number of female buyers.

How do you handle Bible stories that include sex and violence?

Art Ayris: When we first started publishing portions of The Kingstone Bible my own denominational publisher (LifeWay) made me make eight major art changes before they would carry. It took a few tries before we found the right balance but we got there (some of the artists I had to stand on their head). But where the Bible reports, The Kingstone Bible reports. There were many different sets of eyes on this during production: editorial and market focus so we have a lot of confidence on its placement and acceptance in the evangelical marketplace. A former president of the Evangelical Theological Society called it “a powerful new way to get the message of the Bible into the hands, heads, and hearts of people who simply do not read books, much less the Bible.”

Provide an overview of the content in each of the three volumes.

Art Ayris: Volume 1 covers creation through the reign of David. Volume 2 covers the rise of Solomon to the throne through the Intertestamental Period. Volume 3 is the life of Christ through Revelation. We also provide timelines in each graphic novel as well as some additional commentary.

What Bible passage message do you think is particularly conveyed well with its illustration in The Kingstone Bible?

Art Ayris: Our book ends are exceptional. The book of Genesis and the book of Revelation themselves are worth the price of the volumes.

How will readers benefit from these volumes?

Art Ayris: One of the biggest and most important will be engagement for readers with the Scriptures. Comics impart meaning through the reader’s active engagement with written language and juxtaposed sequential images. Educationally, the visuals are stored in long term memory and for struggling readers the comic medium will be especially helpful. From an evangelistic standpoint, this will be much more an initial draw than a traditional text Bible for many irreligious people.

What are your thoughts about Bible Gateway and the Bible Gateway App?

Art Ayris: Totally love the Bible Gateway website. I personally visit it several times a week either on my phone or by computer. I’ve lost count of how many times we used Bible Gateway during the writing and editorial process to compare the different versions and weight different words and phrases. That might have given us an extra layer of richness to the graphic novel text due to the number of versions we read through. Tyndale gave us permission to quote portions from the New Living Translation but we read many different versions to get a full-orbed view of certain passages.

Is there anything else you’d like to say?

Art Ayris: A challenge I like to lay down to pastors (since I am one) is just test the power of comics. At your next outreach have a table of text materials available and also nearby a table of various Kingstone comics. Then let us know where you have the highest level of engagement. There are some fine Bible distribution organizations that stand outside schools and go into prisons. My estimate if they also integrated comics and graphic novels into their distribution their engagement levels would climb 95%-98%—and you would see hardly any discarded. We see it time after time.

One of our products I think that should be in every youth group is The Book of God—a graphic novel that explains the historical and reliable process of how God gave us the Bible.

Bio: Art Ayris is the founder, creative director and CEO of Kingstone Comics (@kingstonecomics), the world’s largest producer of Christian comics and graphic novels. Kingstone Comics is a division of Kingstone, a central-Florida based entertainment company producing inspirational, historical and adventure media including graphic novels, comics, films, animation, books and screen plays of biblical content, biographies, historical fiction, action-adventure and science fiction. After years of searching for engaging resources to connect youth and children to the Bible, Ayris founded Kingstone in 2005 with the vision to provide exciting and engaging comics, graphic novels, animation, films and cutting-edge entertainment to unite the Scriptures with the hearts of children, teens and adults.

In addition to his work with Kingstone, Ayris also serves as the Executive Pastor of First Baptist Church in Leesburg, Florida, recognized worldwide for its innovative community outreach programs including residential drug rehabilitation centers, crisis pregnancy center, feeding center, family homeless shelter, occupational counseling and placement, health clinic and a foster care facility. Art and his wife, Kelly, live in central Florida, the headquarters for Kingstone.

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