His life as a line drawing

A graphic biography tells the story of the Apple founder for those of us who can’t be bothered reading all those other worthy Steve Jobs books out there. Idealog brings you a taster.

THERE ARE MORE than enough books about Steve Jobs’ life – there’s nothing publishers like more than the untimely death of a well-known figure, and when the Apple founder died in October 2011, he was nothing if not famous.

Some of the books are worthy – like the 650-page official biography by Walter Isaacson, issued just weeks after his death. Then there are the weird ones, like The Zen of Steve Jobs (an examination of his meditation techniques, 2012), and the personal ones, like The bite in the apple (2013), written by Chrisann Brennan, the girlfriend Jobs abandoned after the birth of his first child, Lisa.

Some don’t rate him: In Steve Jobs and the NeXT big thing Randall Stross writes: “Jobs’s attempts to build a profitable rival to Apple had led him... from blunder to blunder, disaster to disaster. What makes the NeXT story especially intriguing, however, is the gullibility of many others who lent money, careers, and prestige to Steve Jobs’s quest.” (Yes, OK, that one was written in 1993.)

Others love him, like the 16 eminent thinkers who came together to write about Jobs ( Steve Jobs and Philosophy (2015), edited by Shawn E. Klein), or the 190 well-known artists who drew pictures “to pay respect to the man that changed everything” ( Steve Jobs: Artists’ tribute, 2012).

Still, if you were putting together a short-list of enjoyable reads about Steve Jobs, you’d be hard pushed not to include Jessie Hartland’s latest graphic biography, Steve Jobs: Insanely great.

Hartland is a commercial artist and the book was originally conceived for kids, but the publishers obviously recognized there were plenty of adults out there keen to get a working knowledge of the life and times of Steve Jobs, without having to read 650 pages.

Hartland covers the early life (adopted kid tinkering in the back yard with dad), the drop- out years, the start-up times with Steve Wozniak in his parents’ garage, and on through the Apple years, until Jobs’ death in 2011 – all in black and white cartoon-style pictures.

Herewith a few pages...