K. G. Murray Publishing Company was an Australian company which was well known for reprinting American comics for the Australian market. Most of these were straight-forward reprints without significant editing or curating. But for a brief period from 1980-83, they rebranded as Murray Comics and started to do some interesting things. They created what I believe to be the first character-centric collected editions, predating modern TPBs by 10-20 years. Of course these were very different -- magazine-sized inexpensive black-and-white reprints -- but the curation of the content is the unique thing here. For the first time, characters like Zatanna, Hawkgirl, and Black Canary had their "own title" composed of their various features and backup stories. As someone who is endlessly curious about the development of the female superheros in popular culture, these books are a crucial turning point - exemplifying the shifting of public focus toward these often neglected "secondary characters" since the late 70s.
