A staple of every Christian family home the Bible holds many records including being the world’s best selling book with an estimated 5 billion copies sold worldwide and annual sales figures of over 100 million copies.
It was the first ever mass printed book in the guise of The Gutenberg Bible and it has been one of the greatest influences on literature in the western world and now it is aiming for another record, the world’s longest Graphic Novel.
At 2000 pages in length the novel which is to be called The Kingstone Bible has translated both the Old and New Testaments into Graphic format will actually be released as 12 paperback volumes or three larger hardcover volumes and contains around ten thousand panels filled with the stories we know so well from the traditional Bible.
Taking over seven years to complete Christian Publishers Kingstone used more than 45 illustrators to complete this amazing undertaking, tailoring the illustrator to the books and stories being told. Ayris, kingstone’s founder said that a lot of the texts were difficult to translate into graphic format, and artists were selected to fit the text. “For the book of Revelation we used a top horror artist who had been with Marvel, and it was a great fit for the powerful imagery in that book. Where we dealt with Bible reporting on major slaughter, rapes, adultery etc, we tried to honestly communicate but not be over the top with the graphic portrayals.”
As to why the publisher decided to create a Graphic Bible, Ayris says he chose format because “the interplay of text and images allows one to convey a large amount of content in an abbreviated form”.
“A novice to religion who had never read the Bible before would be able to read through this graphic novel trilogy and have an understanding of some of the key narratives as well as key doctrines in the different books,” he says, “especially the Epistles. We have never seen this as a substitute for Bible reading but as a complement to help people ‘see’ the scriptures in a new light.”
Aimed at preteen and young adult readers it is hoped that this brand new take on one of the best loved books ever produced will bring a whole new group of fans to its message with the plan being to simplify the Bible and remove its daunting reputation
“To a lot of people, the Bible is a big daunting book full of hard to pronounce names and seemingly unrelated stories. However, we come at it from the understanding that it is a document of divine revelation about the nature and character of God, his dealings with mankind, a chronicle of ancient history as well as a revelation of the future.”
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