Akira Comics Home Page

This is the Comics Section of Akira 2019. It features all the English and Japanese language comics such as the coloured Epic versions and the original re-mastered Dark Horse volumes as well as various magazines that feature Akira, such as Young Magazine and Manga Mania. I have tried to be extensive in my reasearch but unfortunatelly I have not included or dealt with the various versions released in languages other than Japanese and English.

Akira Manga - A Short History

The Akira Manga originally started life as a monthly comic in Japan's Young Magazine which was published by Kodansha. This run to it's final conclusion from 20-12-1982 to 25-06-1990 (Young Magazine 1982 No.24 to 1990 No.28).

Before the comic finished it's run in Young Magazine it started to be released in collected phone book sized volumes in Japan. 6 volumes all together from 21-09-1984 to 23-02-1993

During this time the comic had started being translated and coloured for release in the west by Epic Comics. This was a 38 issue run from what I believe to be 1989 to 1995. The translation by Epic Comics was severely edited and dumbed down for the western audience, most shockingly of all, Katsuhiro Otomo was commissioned to rewrite the ending for the western run. The reason for this rewrite remains unknown to me but this certainly can't have been a good thing. This rewrite caused a significant delay in the release of tha last few issues.

Whilst the 38 issue run was being released, a set of larger collected volumes with better quality paper had started being released by Epic. But because the ending of the 38 issue run was being delayed, presumably because of the re-write Otomo was doing, it caused the collected volumes to be cancelled at Volume 10 roughly issue 31 of the 38 issue run. This was a big disappointment to many fans who waited to buy the volumes instead of the series. These volumes came out from 1990 to 1993, a further two volumes would have been necessary to finish this collected series.

To this point, the west hadn't been able to read the full story as originally intended for the Japanese audience, that is, until the year 2000 when Dark Horse Comics decided to do a new accurate English translation and release the original black and white Manga in a new 6 volume set, much like the Japanese volumes and just as the original creator had intended. This is what was needed from the start for such a prestigious piece of work. These 6 volumes were relased in an incremental run from 13-12-2000 to 27-03-2002 in the US and from 23-02-2001 to 26-04-2002 in the UK.

These Dark Horse volumes went on to win two Eisner awards in 2002 for both; Best Archival Collection/Project and Best U.S. Edition of Foreign Material (Even with all the spelling errors, and I did find a few). The UK versions were published by Titan Books.

In 2003 Kodansha re-released the Japanese Volumes with new covers, the details of these volumes is unknown to me, but I can guess that they are much the same as the original Japanese 6 Volume set.

Details and images of all these sets can be found in this section.