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IPC Magazines Ltd, also called Fleetway, were for much of the 20th Century one of the three largest comics publishers in Britain, along with DC Thomson and Marvel UK. Notable comics publications included 2000AD, Buster, Tiger, Girl, Hurricane, Battle Picture Weekly, Valiant,Misty, Vulcan, Whizzer and Chips, Scorcher, Score, Tornado, Shiver and Shake, Monster Fun, Wow!, Cor!!, Knockout, Lion, Whoopee!, Jackpot, Krazy Comic, Cheeky Weekly, Star-Lord, Eagle, Roy of the Rovers, Scream, Action and Speed. Later publications included Crisis and Revolver, which were aimed at an older age group.

IPC's history is a long and complex one. In 1958, Cecil Harmsworth King (chairman of the newspaper group which included the Daily Mirror) purchased magazine publishers Associated Press Ltd, and in 1959 changed their name to Fleetway. In 1961, the company absorbed Odhams Press (publishers of the Power Comics line), who had themselves already absorbed both George Newnes Publishers and Hulton Press, publishers of the Eagle and its various sister titles. All the various companies had initially continued to operate as independent entities, but in 1963 were placed under the umbrella of a newly created parent company, the International Publishing Corporation, or IPC. The company was divided up into six divisions, with IPC Magazines Ltd handling the company's comics and consumer magazines (the other divisions handled newspapers, technical magazines, books, printing and other projects). In 1970, the company was taken over by Reed International.

In 1987, IPC's comic properties were divided up, with all the characters and strip published since 1st January 1970, plus 26 characters then appearing in Buster, allocated to a separate company, Fleetway, which was then sold to Pergamon Holdings, a company owned by Robert Maxwell. Infamously, Maxwell's son ordered the destruction of the comics archive, which he saw as simply taking up space; hundreds, perhaps thousands of pages of art were simply dumped in a skip in the rain, though some artists (including Kevin O'Neill ) were allowed to recover some of their work. In 1991, Egmont UK purchased Fleetway and merged it with their own comics publishing operation, London Editions Magazines, to form Fleetway Editions. This was eventually absorbed into the main Egmont operation by 2000, though the science fiction anthology 2000AD was sold off to Rebellion, with Egmont now publishing only reprint and licensed titles. IPC itself retained all its comics properties created before January 1970 (including the Steel Claw, Kelly's Eye and Battler Britton, the sole exception being Dan Dare, who was sold off separately to the Dan Dare Corporation. IPC Magazines is now IPC Media, and is owned by Time, Inc. , the magazine publishing division of Time Warner, who purchased it in 2001.

In 2005-2006, many of the IPC comic characters resurfaced in the pages of 'Albion', a six issue limited series published by Wildstorm, an imprint of DC Comics, which is also owned by Time Warner. Separate series' featuring Battler Britton and Thunderbolt Jaxon followed later.

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