Catalan Communications was a New York City publishing company that existed from 1983 to 1991. Operated by Bernd Metz, it mainly focused on English-language translations of European graphic novels presented in a series of high-quality trade paperbacks, or rather comic albums, a European book format American comic book readers were at the time not accustomed to, neither for their physical dimensions nor for their contents aimed at a mature readership, and who at the time had the tendency to use the diminutive term "Euro-comics" to refer to the then-unfamiliar format. Metz became one of the first American publishers to introduce U.S. readership to European-style comics on a larger scale than the niche-market efforts undertaken by HM Communications – publisher of the groundbreaking Heavy Metal magazine – in the preceding decade. Source: Wikipedia (en)