Introducing the Federal Publishing Company
Between 1983 and 1986, the Federal Publishing Company (FPC) reprinted contemporary DC and Marvel comics, occasionally dipping into a backlist of stories acquired from the K. G. Murray Publishing Company.
FPC was a new publishing division of Hannanprint, formed through the acquisition of leisure and special interest publications from ACP Publishing, the company that acquired Murray from its founding family in 1972. Hannanprint's Eastern Suburbs Newspapers (subsequently ESN The Litho Centre) also became the printers for the comics at that time.
Federal initially maintained continuity with Murray's line of DC reprints, continuing the numbering of some titles and briefly using "Murray the Cat" branding—although this quickly converted to a distinctive "Federal Comics" logo. During this period, Federal also produced some Charlton reprints, particularly romance stories and Hanna-Barbera titles.
In mid-1984, Federal's branding was supplanted by "Australian Edition DC" and, finally, the standard DC Comics logo in mid-1985 . At about this time, Federal took over the Marvel licence from the Yaffa Publishing Group, initially branding its reprints as "Marvel Australian Edition" before converting to the standard Marvel logo in 1985.
The format for Federal's reprints was initially black and white comics with 84 pages. To fit the page count, stories were routinely edited or padded with an interior cover reprint. Except for some idiosyncratic anthology titles, the issues typically included sequential stories from multiple issues of the original US series.
In late 1984, many Federal series converted to colour and were reduced to 32 pages. Technological advances may have driven this change, as Hannan's Courier Newspapers pioneered colour on gloss paper for suburban newspapers in 1985. Through the final period, some reprints were also 68 page, black and white comics.
In April 1986, the Federal Publishing Company exited the comics field, although it remains one of Australia's major publishers of websites, magazines and community newspapers. The company has been owned by News Limited since 2006.
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