Jobs and Woz, in Manga, for Kids!

By way of Boingboing.net, my attention has been drawn to an '80s manga by Mitsuru Sugaya about the birth of Apple. Not speaking Japanese, I managed to get some gist of the artist's commentary (though not the comic dialogue itself) from the Babelfish version. I particularly enjoyed their rendition of Mitsuru's descriptions of one of Woz's teen pranks. (See if you can guess what it does...)

Concerning interest and [itazura] to electronics construction of this, the experience of the writer is projected. However the writer made, it was something where the primary coil and the secondary coil the hand it does to wind the electric shock surprise box, with the nail of the iron as a core, with intermittence of the buzzer false interchange makes and transforms. When the box of the chocolate is pulled out, [butsu] and sound doing, [biritsu] it is to have the [itazura] toy which becomes numb, but that handmade it is something which is done.

The artist also has this to (sort of) say about what he was trying to accomplish, which I loosely and probably inaccurately perceive as meaning that he wanted to make kids feel what it was like in the early heyday of Silicon Valley in their guts:

Concerning venture business you had known, but as for viewing the word, venture capital and the venture capitalist to, this time was unprecedented. This article becoming opportunity, interest grows even in the mechanism and economy of stocks, that eventually, means to be connected to drawing business information cartoon. When also you go out to Silicon Valley in 1983, wants to try feeling the atmosphere of actual place of such a venture business with the body.

I can't tell if he succeeded, but it was awfully fun to check out. If anyone comes across a translation of the comic itself, post it here!

[Published originally at The Laroquod Experiment.]