Think of it as a Nazarene in action: an athletic man, performing miracles and saving the world.
Sergio’s career in art began when he was a child in northeast Brazil. He doodled on napkins and church bulletins, and by age 5, he had decided to become a cartoonist. At 11 he landed his first gig drawing Frederico, the Detective, a weekly comic strip he invented for his local newspaper, Diario De Pernambuco.
Growing up, Sergio attended church every Sunday, but it wasn’t until he stepped into the electric world of Word of Life camp in Recife that his relationship with Christ really came alive.
"Every visit to Word of Life was a spiritual injection,” Sergio says. “An extreme boost to my spirit.”
Sergio responded to Christ’s call at camp when he was 15, but soon after, he started to struggle in his walk with God. He dealt with many of the challenges teenage Christians face, and he lost momentum.
Then, the following year, Sergio began to return to his faith. What made the difference this time was his pastors, Roberval Lyra and Sergio Lyra, who were both involved with Word of Life.
“They nurtured me back to church” when they asked him to draw charts for a church fundraising campaign, he says.
Sergio recommitted his life to Christ and soon enrolled in the Bible Institute in Recife in 1981, just after high school. There, he was surrounded every day with a full dose of Word of Life’s discipleship, ministry, and personal growth formula: Scripture memorization, Quiet Time, and ministry opportunities such as Open Air Evangelism, sharing the Gospel door-to-door, travels across Brazil with the Collegians, and children’s ministry at local churches.
Sergio stayed connected to local pastors, and eventually his story made it to George Theis, the founder of Word of Life Recife. Theis turned to the Word of Life scholarship program to see if there was a way Sergio could go to the New York campus for further Bible study under the Bible Institute and School of Youth Ministries program (now second year).
For Sergio, moving to the States and attending the Bible Institute as a more mature believer was a dream come true. He deems his experience at the Schroon Lake Bible Institute campus “phenomenal.”
“It was a new land with new dreams,” he says, “(The Bible Institute) in Recife was great, but New York was greater.”
Although the setting and teaching of the Bible were familiar for Sergio, plenty of what he experienced in New York was foreign. He struggled at first with the colloquial English being spoken in his classes (he had been taught British English) and the speed at which the professors spoke. But he worked hard to understand the language and even made the dean’s list.
Sergio also retained the one language he had always been able to speak: drawing. His caricatures made frequent appearances at the Ranch, showing up at the weekly rodeo and on a variety of summer materials.
Sergio’s art was also a way into his learning. In Professor Marshall Wicks’ Bible Survey class, students always enjoyed a dose of Peanuts or Calvin and Hobbes before the lecture began. Sergio could relate to the comics as a skilled cartoonist.
While attending the Bible Institute, Sergio began looking for the next step for his creative ambition. He was accepted into The Kubert School in New Jersey, formerly the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art, which has educated many of the comic artists working in the field today. It was a dream he’d had ever since he saw an ad for the school in Batman, issue #350, as a child in Brazil in 1982.
Sergio was leaving the well-supported world of Word of Life and heading into many unknowns — but this time, he says, he felt prepared.
“At the Bible Institute, Sergio became a Bible-based guy,” he says of himself.
The Word of Life Bible Institute, Sergio says, gave him a solid foundation for the practices and balances within his own life.
“The Bible memorization and study, prayer, and Quiet Time defined a lot of who I am today and how I relate to people,” he says, “It shaped my life to be more like Him.”
While the Bible Institute helped establish Sergio’s spiritual foundation, The Kubert School gave him what he needed to become a more polished artist. Marvel and DC Comics sought him out to do professional work, and Sergio was so busy with the lucrative side projects that he left Kubert before he even finished his degree.
After several years as a professional, sketching characters that included The Green Lantern, Batman, Wonder Woman, Steel, and The Flash, he returned to Kubert to teach for seven years.
One day, a fellow instructor and Christian, Alec Stevens, approached Sergio about working on a faith-based comic book called Glory to God. As part of the project’s illustrations, Sergio drew an iconic sketch of Jesus carrying the cross, which drew attention from several Christian communities.
David C. Cook Publishing saw the drawing and contacted Sergio in 2006 for a project of its own, but on a much larger scale. David C. Cook wanted to revamp The Picture Bible, an illustrated version of the Bible that began circulating in the 1970s. Sergio had the original Picture Bible as a child in Brazil and loved it. He agreed to jump on the project. As the plans progressed, David C. Cook decided instead to give Sergio’s illustrated Bible a new title: The Action Bible, which reads like a lengthy graphic novel, featuring Biblical superheroes and traditional comic book text bubbles.
It took Sergio three busy years to complete the 752-page illustrated Bible while he also worked on projects for Dynamite Entertainment and Zondervan.
“I would do 27 pages for The Action Bible each month, 22 pages for The Lone Ranger, and 50 for Son of Samson,” he recalls.
Sergio completed the mountainous assignments with the help of his wife, Luzia, who he met at a Brazilian church in New Jersey while attending The Kubert School. Luzia helped format many of The Action Bible’s pages, erasing pencil lines and inking black spots.
“She is a great helper and supporter,” Sergio says of his wife.
They will celebrate 18 years of marriage this year. Although they do not have children of their own, both Sergio and Luzia have a background in children’s ministry and are thrilled to see The Action Bible inspire faith in so many kids.
“I see the power of God touching this book,” Sergio says. “I see kids getting saved and wanting to know more about Jesus. I get emails every day from readers and parents.”
Although Sergio is a long-time admirer of the tales of Samson and Moses, he says his favorite to illustrate by far was the story of Christ.
“It was amazing being able to depict Jesus as I see fit. I drew Him as a man who is tough, manly, able to defend himself, build tables and doors, and walk many miles,” he says.
The illustrated Jesus story from The Action Bible was also published and distributed as a booklet in more than 20 countries. In Sergio’s home country of Brazil, the booklet excited a group of Native Amazon Indians who speak traditional languages and could not understand the text. They could relate to Jesus because, they said, He and the disciples looked like them — strong and well built. The booklets were a doorway to them asking more questions about Christ.
“That is a high compliment,” Sergio says. “The best an artist can get.”
The Action Bible was published in September 2010 to great response from the Christian community. Sergio is struck by the number of people affected by the book, saying it’s “amazing,” “unreal,” and “surreal.” “The only explanation is the anointing by the Spirit,” he says.
Sergio is working right now on his fourth volume of The Christ for Kingstone Media as well as various freelance projects for Marvel, DC Comics, and several Christian organizations. He says he still thanks God for his creative gift and points to Ecclesiastes 3, which describes God’s perfect timing and His beauty revealed through the cycles of life, as a passage that speaks to his philosophy of art.
In The Action Bible, Sergio summarizes Ecclesiastes 3 in one page called “Solomon’s Seasons.” He says he designed the page to feature the key elements in life that we all go through every day. It ends with the Scripture: “He has made everything beautiful in its time ... everything God does will endure forever,” in the iconic, italicized Comic Sans font.
“We are all just copying what has been done before us,” he says. “Jesus Himself is the Artist of all artists — the main character — the focus of it all.”
The Action Bible doesn’t just change the lives of those reading it — it was a powerful experience for Sergio as well. While drawing, Sergio began to think more about what the people of the Bible went through during their lives and recognized how those truths were in his life, too. He often felt so overwhelmed during sketching sessions that he would drop to his knees in worship. He says working on The Action Bible confirmed what he understands of God.
“We are part of God’s life story; we each play a part,” he says. “We know it will be a happy ending.”
Sergio and his wife, Luzia, serve in their local church under Pastor Joseph Cerreta. Sergio is an ordained minister and director of the contemporary praise and worship team for Living Faith Christian Fellowship.
To learn more about what Sergio is up to, visit sergiocariello.com, sergiocariello.blogspot.com, or theactionbible.com.
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