What Are the English Editions of X?
Three English lives: a magazine serialization, eighteen singles renamed X/1999, and six fat omnibuses that finally printed it the way it was drawn.
Viz Media brought X to North America under the title X/1999, a rename made for the first English printing and kept for the whole single-volume run. The manga was serialized in Viz's Animerica Extra magazine, removed in July 2001 over licensing issues, restored in March 2003, and collected in eighteen volumes, complete on 10 May 2005. Madman Entertainment handled Australia.
Dark Horse, the other great CLAMP publisher in English, publicly declined to license X in 2010 while it remained unfinished in Japan. Viz kept the license, and in 2011 gave the series its second English form.
THE SINGLES
X/1999, volumes 1 to 18The run
Eighteen volumes matching the Japanese contents, Prelude to Inversion. The earliest appeared out of order in the experimental years of English manga publishing: volume 6, Duet, was in print by 2000, years before volume 1’s 2003 edition.
The covers
Viz commissioned a distinct cover system: black bands, the silver X/1999 masthead, and a different CLAMP painting for every volume, the set pictured in this shelf’s gallery.
The reading direction
Early English editions of manga were routinely flipped to read left to right. Viz’s later marketing for the omnibus, pages recomposed in the original right-to-left order and restored, tells you the singles belonged to the flipped era’s tail end.
THE OMNIBUSES
X (3-in-1 Edition), 2011 onwardThe format
Announced in March 2011, the 3-in-1 edition collects three volumes per book, about 580 pages each, under the restored title X. The first volume was published on 7 November 2011 (dated 2012 in some listings).
The color pages
Each omnibus carries full-color illustrations that had never been published outside Japan, one of the few places an English reader can see the series’ color art without importing the art books.
Six books, whole story
Six omnibuses cover all eighteen volumes, which makes the 3-in-1 the most practical complete English X, and the singles the most beautiful shelf object. Collectors argue it both ways; the editions page of this shelf simply records that both exist.