John Lennon manga

“Astro Boy Pocket Biography: John Lennon” is a manga (Japanese comic) about the life of John Lennon of the Beatles. It’s a children’s biography comic that I picked up in Japan.  Astro Boy introduces the story.

IMPORTANT: This comic is scanned in 2-page spreads. Japanese comics are read right-to-left.  In other words, follow the speech bubbles for the right page of the spread and THEN the left page in right-to-left, counter-clockwise fashion. Click the thumbnails to see larger images.

Some of the pages are in color, while others are in B&W.  This is how the original work was published.

Sorry about the changes in font and style…it took me a while to find a good program for editing the images that worked fast enough.

Important Note: please do not distribute this translation for profit or without linking back to this page.  This could jeopardize the future of the project.  Also, please do not take any images from this page without visibly and discreetly crediting Recca Phoenix.

Note: if you want to buy this manga in Japanese, it is available here at amazon.co.jp.

Last update: 6/14/10 – Uploaded Chapter 2: The Rebel and Q&A #2.

Sections:

• Prologue

• Chapter 1: My Wounded Heart (birth – age 5)

• Q&A #1: What type of place is Liverpool?

• Chapter 2: The Rebel (age 11 – 15) and Q&A#2

• Chapter 3: Meetings and Goodbyes (age 17-21)
• Q&A #3: What is a “Live House”?
• Chapter 4: Fame – Light and Shadow (age 21-22)
• Q&A #4: Just how popular were the Beatles?
• Chapter 5: Love and Peace (age 22-40)
• John and Yoko’s Love Song: Love and Peace
• The rest of the segments are mostly textual information (not manga) on John’s friends, what was going on in the world while he was alive, and his influence. Not really all that exciting, so I won’t translate them.