How can you tell a first printing of Devilman?
Look for five Kodansha Comics volumes from 1972–73, carrying a text with nothing added.
Devilman’s collecting trap is that the “same” five volumes exist in at least three different texts. A first edition is identified less by any single mark than by a battery of contents tests: the 1972–73 Kodansha Comics printings contain the magazine story, only the magazine story, in five volumes dated October 1972 to September 1973. Run the tests below and later editions eliminate themselves. The covers census behind them is in the manga gallery.
THE TESTS
How the editions eliminate themselves1 · The imprint and dates
Kodansha Comics, five volumes: October 20, 1972; November 25, 1972; April 18, 1973; July 10, 1973; September 10, 1973. Any other publisher’s line, date pattern, or volume count is a later object.
2 · The ISBN trail
The first-edition set is catalogued today under ISBNs 406109176X, 4061091778, 4061091891, 4061091980, and 4061092073, the quickest shelf check against a listing before you ever open the book.
3 · The Shin Devilman test
If Shin Devilman episodes are bound inside the volumes, the book is 1987 or later. The Deluxe Edition folded them in; the first edition has never contained them.
4 · The prelude test
A 32-page prelude, “Great War of the Gods,” at the front of volume 1 marks the Deluxe text (1987 onward). First-edition volume 1 opens with the story itself.
5 · The chapter test
Chapter divisions with new frontispiece art belong to the Deluxe lineage. Beware the one exception: the 2012 Revised Edition removes the chapters again, but it restores cut pages, drops two Shin episodes, and comes in four volumes, not five.
6 · The cover test
Volume 1’s first-edition face is Akira above Devilman. The full-painting Devilman against the Earth is the 1993 KCDX reissue. Both covers, side by side, are in the gallery.