Short answers, pulled from the story.
Cobra was written and illustrated by Buichi Terasawa. It first appeared as a one-shot in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump in 1977, then began regular serialization from the 6th of November 1978, issue.
Approximately 50 million copies of the Cobra manga have been sold in Japan, making it one of Weekly Shonen Jump's best-selling manga series of all time.
Terasawa drew on spaghetti westerns, the James Bond film series, Jean-Paul Belmondo's performances in Breathless (1960) and That Man from Rio (1964), Jane Fonda's role in Barbarella (1968), and the work of manga artist Osamu Tezuka, who mentored him.
The feature film Space Adventure Cobra was released in Japan on the 23rd of July 1982. It was directed by Osamu Dezaki, with a screenplay co-written by Terasawa and Haruya Yamazaki.
In April 2018, Aja revealed the film had been in preproduction at Lionsgate until a regime change; the company's new staff judged the budget of US$130 million too high. The release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens was also cited as a factor in the cancellation.
Manga author Kentaro Miura cited Cobra's Psychogun as an influence on the prosthetic hand of Guts in Berserk (1989). Video game designer Hideki Kamiya credited Cobra's style as the inspiration for Dante in Devil May Cry. Shinichiro Watanabe's Cowboy Bebop (1998) and Space Dandy (2014) also draw from Cobra.