Steve Jobs as adorable manga man

Using Walter Isaacson’s best-selling biography as a frame, award-winning author Mari Yamazaki has created a manga version of the life of Apple founder Steve Jobs. It’s being serialized in the Japanese comic magazine Kiss, alongside tales of teen love.

So it’s not surprising, then, that Jobs is portrayed as “a cute, doe-eyed kid who worries about whether his adoptive parents love him,” writes Sam Byford at the Verge. In the first installment, he also grows into a rebellious teenager; the Verge has a shot of the frame in which Jobs reclines on the grass, smoking a joint.

It all starts, though, with the instantly recognizable adult Jobs: black turtleneck, glasses, pensive expression. That’s in the present day, when Jobs discusses the biography with Isaacson, and it’s rendered in a realistic style, a departure from the manga look.

Will Apple’s early days be portrayed in the manga style, with Steve Wozniak and the rest dressed as action heroes? Will the Apple IIc or first generation, jewel-colored iMacs have special powers?

Readers will have to wait and see -- the first serial ends with Jobs and Wozniak meeting.

And one other thing readers will have to do: read Japanese. The rest of us -- well, we can look at the pictures.

ALSO:

Philip Roth gets ‘Unmasked’ on PBS -- or does he?

Basquiat book in the works to feature unseen archives, art

Oops: Stephen Colbert says Junot Diaz has won the Nobel Prize

Carolyn Kellogg: Join me on Twitter, Facebook and Google+