Short answers, pulled from the story.
Akira was first serialized on the 20th of December 1982 in Kodansha's Young Magazine and ran biweekly until the 25th of June 1990. Its 120 chapters were collected into six tankōbon volumes released between September 1984 and March 1993.
Akira was written and illustrated by Katsuhiro Otomo. It was his most ambitious work and grew well beyond the roughly ten chapters he originally proposed to Kodansha.
By 2000, Akira had sold over 7 million copies worldwide, including at least 2 million in Japan and roughly 5 million overseas through the 38 issues of Epic Comics. In 2020, its first volume became Kodansha's first manga to reach a 100th printing.
Akira was fully colored for the American market to match the conventions of American and European comics. The coloring was done by Steve Oliff at Olyoptics, hand-picked by Otomo. Akira was the first comic in the world to be colored digitally, and the technique led to widespread adoption of computer coloring across the comics industry.
Akira won the Kodansha Manga Award for Best General Manga in 1984, a Harvey Award for Best American Edition of Foreign Material in 1993, and Eisner Awards in 2002 and 2018. Steve Oliff's digital coloring work on the American edition also earned him three consecutive Harvey Awards for Best Colorist from 1990 to 1992 and the first-ever Eisner Award for Best Coloring in 1992.
Otomo drew heavily on Mitsuteru Yokoyama's manga Tetsujin 28-go (1956-1966), sharing its character names and the concept of an ultimate weapon from wartime. Alfred Bester's 1953 novel The Demolished Man contributed the idea of government oversight of psychic individuals. Otomo also cited the 1977 film Star Wars as an influence on the series' cinematic scale.