The original run of Akira was featured in Young Magazine (published by Kōdansha), a magazine specifically targeted for adult men (Seinen). Each new installment in the manga, ranging from 15-26 pages long and was called an “episode”, with 120 in all. Akira began serialization on December 20, 1982, and continued until June 25, 1990 (the Anime was released in 1988). The price per issue of Young Magazine was about ¥180 (about $3.81 US dollars in the 1980s) for the entire release of Akira. Each new Episode also featured a title illustration made specifically for that chapter.
Below includes the entire original first chapter of the manga as seen in Young Magazine (link to image source):
cover of the first issue featuring Akira 
Table of Contents 
pg. 1 
Episode 1 title page 
pg. 28-29
The first release of the Akira manga in English was released by Epic Comics, an imprint of Marvel. The entire translated manga was released from 1989 to 1995 and consisted of 38 digitally colored issues (and is considered to be one of the first digitally colored manga ever). These versions were also altered from the original Japanese versions to make them more accessible to English-speaking audiences by flipping the image and changing the speech bubbles since manga reads right to left and is read vertically.
Colorist Steve Oliff was recruited to digitally paint the manga. Initially, Oliff would send drafts to Otomo for his endorsement but was later given the OK from Otomo himself to continue coloring without his approval. Later, these fully-colored pages would be used in the full-color Japanese edition of the manga.
These iterations of the English Manga are no longer being made, so the price per book currently goes from about 8 US dollars to upwards of 100+ US dollars. (originally, the cover price for the 38 issue manga was on average $4.80)
panel comparison 
Download link for full-color manga: https://getcomics.info/other-comics/akira-1-38-tpb-vol-1-6/
Marvel/Epic Comics also released a more consolidated version of the same translated and digitally colored comic (with higher quality paper in a larger size) into 10 volumes from 1990 to 1993. Unfortunately, this volume set was never completed, (with only the equivalent of the first 31 issues of the original translated manga) and would require an extra volume or two in order to finish the story.
the ten-volume publication prices fluctuated from $14.95, to $16.95, and finally $17.95 US dollars. This could possibly hint to how little revenue the publication was making at the time of its release and the reason for its eventual discontinuation.
In the Akira Club Artbook, there are six designated sections for the episodes to fall in, and each section represents a large volume of the entire manga. These separations in the Artbook later become the separate volumes that Kōdansha Comics releases them in for the most recent version of the manga. These volumes also include a few full-color pages at the start of the manga as well as a short biography on Katsuhiro Otomo in the back. The volumes were released in the years 2009, 2010, and 2011 and are currently listed at $24.99 US dollars per volume.
These volumes are also the only publication of the manga in circulation other than the 35th-anniversary box set (which main differences are that it is in the original left-to-right format, almost completely in black and white, and includes the original hand-drawn SFX).
Short Guide to volume breakup:
- episodes 1-18 = volume 1
- episodes 19-33 = volume 2
- episodes 34-48 = volume 3
- episodes 49-71 = volume 4
- episodes 72-96 = volume 5
- episodes 97-120 = volume 6
original episode 12 cover 
Epic Comics 3 
Manga Volume 1
As shown above, the original episode covers were still utilized in the making of the Epic Comics covers in some cases. Volume 1 of the manga covers the same part of the story as the comic and the episode, but since it encapsulates more of the story, the original image is not featured on the cover.
Exploring Akira 