Dreamwave Productions

"We're not saying you should buy Dreamwave comics, only that you'll regret it."

Dreamwave Productions was a fairly unknown independent comic book publisher when it obtained the Transformers license in 2001. For a time, there was gigantic buzz surrounding Dreamwave's relaunch of the Generation 1 title, even pushing it past Marvel and DC's top titles. Many comic book fans had been away from Transformers for a long time and were overjoyed to see highly detailed manga-style art driving a childhood favorite.

Dreamwave published a good deal of Transformers books, including many varied miniseries, before capitulating to internal pressures and mismanagement. Towards the end of 2004 delays started getting more and more frequent. This was followed by rumors of writers and artists leaving because they weren't being paid, which were then confirmed. In early January 2005, Dreamwave declared bankruptcy, and there were no Transformers comics to be had for more than half of 2005.

History

The beginnings

Dreamwave Productions was originally launched by brothers Pat and Roger Lee as a studio within Image Comics in 1996, at the height of the Image boom.

In 1998, Dreamwave would start to publish various blatantly plagiarized originally created titles such as Darkminds and Warlands, as well as accepting work-for-hire assignments for other publishers such as the four-issue limited series Wolverine/Punisher: Revelation for Marvel. Other titles such as Shidima, Fate of the Blade or Arkanium would follow. Furthermore, Dreamwave also collaborated with VIBE and Wizard: The Comics Magazine on various projects, developed an advertising campaign for the Dr. Martens shoe label and created the production designs for the music video to Janet Jackson's song "Doesn't Really Matter".

Initially, the "hook" for Dreamwave's financial success was the drawing style of its president, Pat Lee, which many readers viewed as "manga-like" (although readers of actual Japanese manga had a different opinion on this matter).

Big 80s

Oh boy, were we naïve.

In October 2000, issue #111 of Wizard: The Comics Magazine ran a feature named "Big 80s", featuring various popular properties of the 1980s in new interpretations by modern artists, such as Thundercats drawn by Jim Cheung, Masters of the Universe drawn by Ed McGuinness, G.I. Joe drawn by J. Scott Campbell, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles drawn by Joe Madureira. Dreamwave submitted their own take on the Transformers, one of Pat's personal favorites from his childhood days, with Pat Lee himself and Alvin Lee handling the art. Wizard, making suggestions for a modern Transformers comic, named Mark Millar as their number one choice for the writer of the book, with Pat Lee (aka "Mr. Mecha") on art duties.

Needless to say, the modern-style "manga"-like Transformers artwork caused an uproar in the established fandom as well as among regular comic fans who remembered Transformers from their childhoods. Seven months later, Pat got another chance of drawing Transformers characters in a feature named "How to draw Mecha" for issue #118 of Wizard.

In retrospect, this very first image depicting Megatron's fusion cannon on the wrong arm turned out to be foreshadowing.

Splitting from Image and getting the Transformers license

How to draw a mess of lines that look like Transformers once the colorist has salvaged it.

Still in 2000, a group of Dreamwave employees (including Alvin Lee, who had worked with Pat on the Wizard piece) departed from their company to form their own business, UDON Studios.

A year later, Hasbro was offering the license for new Transformers comics, which had effectively remained unused since Marvel Comics's Generation 2 issue 12 in 1994. Several companies, including Marvel (with UDON being supposed to handle the art), were interested, but all of them used the piece of artwork Dreamwave had done for Wizard. Dreamwave at one point intended to cooperate with Top Cow, but Top Cow rejected the offer. Ultimately, Dreamwave decided to get the license themselves instead of going through another company, claiming that Pat Lee would only handle the art if Dreamwave got the license. Marvel ultimately backed out because of the license fee Hasbro demanded.^[2]

Dreamwave officially acquired the Transformers license in December 2001,^[3] although Hasbro would ultimately never get the license fee in full. To commemorate the new flagship title, Dreamwave officially cut all ties with Image and became an independent publisher on their own.

Success of the Transformers titles

Dreamwave's launch title, Transformers: Generation One vol. 1, written by Chris Sarracini and drawn by Pat Lee, became an instant hit, dominating Diamond's sales charts for months. Back then, rumors were circulating that Dreamwave had manipulated the market through a special deal with Diamond to ensure their success, or that Hasbro had set up an account to order large numbers of the Transformers comics. In fact Hasbro had ordered less than 200 copies per issue, primarily because they were not guaranteed free copies from their contract with Dreamwave.^[2] Later that year, other companies also reported high sales of "nostalgia" titles, thus further challenging those rumors.^[4]

Dreamwave would soon expand their range of Transformers comics to include an ongoing Transformers: Armada series (which later evolved into Transformers: Energon to accompany the respective toylines), initially also written by Sarricini. Although the second Generation 1 volume was originally supposed to be written by Sarracini again, he was replaced by new writer James McDonough (who originally worked under the alias "Brad Mick"), who ultimately wrote an entirely different story than what was originally intended.^[5] With issue #5 of the third Generation One volume (now an ongoing title), McDonough was joined by his longtime friend Adam Patyk, now forming a writing duo, eventually shifting out his "Brad Mick" alias.

Furthermore, Dreamwave hired fan-favorite Simon Furman to pen various Transformers: The War Within mini-series, the first official Transformers fiction ever to be not directly based on an existing toyline. Furman would be joined by artist Don Figueroa, whom Dreamwave had hired directly out of the fandom. More fan artists such as Guido Guidi and Joe Ng would soon follow Don into the professional comic book world. Meanwhile, Furman would later also take over the Armada title as a writer.

Trouble on the horizon

The first problems arose in late 2002, when it turned out that Dreamwave had only acquired the license for distributing Transformers titles in the United States, which resulted in a temporary hold in the international distribution until the matter was settled.^[6] However, Dreamwave were far from being the only company suffering from that problem, as Devil's Due Press (then part of Image Comics) were also no longer allowed to distribute their G.I. Joe comic abroad, and other companies encountered similar problems.^[7] The problem was eventually resolved, and comics were allowed to be distributed internationally again.

Following the success of their Transformers titles, Dreamwave put their own titles Warlands and Darkminds on hold, instead focusing on other licensed books such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, numerous Capcom franchises such as Mega Man, and Duel Masters (a Hasbro-backed Japanese import card game/toyline). None of those titles would last particularly long, and some (mainly numerous Capcom titles) never even got the first issue out. This was also when rumors of creators not getting paid first came up.^[8] Rumors about a rigid "house style" committing other artists to draw in a style close to company president Pat Lee started to circulate as well, most evident in the second War Within miniseries, where the original pencils by artist Andrew Wildman were drastically reworked by the inker, with rather disappointing results. In a rather bizarre move, a press release for "manga-sized" reprints (one of them for Energon) would tell retailers that the trades were shorter and more expensive than regular manga in the first paragraph.^[9]

In mid-2004, Dreamwave announced the "addition" of new creators,^[10] failing to mention that this also meant the departure of Adam Patyk and James McDonough from the company. Although Dreamwave tried to contain this delicate bit of information by asking websites to consider any public statements by the two regarding their current situation with Dreamwave as "private" and thus delete them,^[11] some sites ignored that request, thereby revealing that Patyk and McDonough were owed a significant amount of money for their work.^[12] A worried James Raiz would turn down an offer to draw the next War Within miniseries, not wanting to risk doing a lot of work for no money.^[13]

At the same time, Pat Lee would start to do contractual work for Marvel and DC again, such as issues of House of M or Superman/Batman.

The end

While other artists and writers, including Simon Furman, at least temporarily joined the fold of creators not getting paid by Dreamwave, Chris Sarracini was asked to rewrite the stories previously submitted by Patyk and McDonough.^[14] Likewise, a long-since announced Beast Wars title McDonough and Patyk had previously worked on was now supposed to be written by Furman instead. Those stories would ultimately never be published, as Hasbro had already declined to renew Dreamwave's license to publish Transformers comics by this point.^[15] Following numerous rumors, including one posted by Ben Yee on his own website BWTF.com, Dreamwave officially declared bankruptcy on January 4, 2005, blaming the weak United States Dollar and other scapegoats for the company's failure, including a vastly incorrect claim about Dreamwave being the "only Canadian independent comics publisher".^[16]

By this time, Pat and Roger had already spent four months secretly moving most of Dreamwave's assets to a new company named Dream Engine, whose website domain was registered to Roger's name. The existence of Dream Engine first became public in early January 2005.^[17]

The aftermath

The overall amount of Dreamwave's debt was far over a million dollars.^[18] While former Dreamwave employees never saw a single cent of the money they were owed for their work, Pat Lee repeated the performance a year later with Dream Engine, ultimately resulting in him departing from the new company and once again starting a new business, Pat Lee Productions. Meanwhile, a Canadian entrepreneur named Christian Dery acquired the remaining Dreamwave assets, including the name "Dreamwave" and the rights to their "original" titles such as Warlands or Darkminds, in August 2005. Ultimately, no new Dreamwave comics would ever see the light of day, and the "new" Dreamwave ended up not paying employees either.^[19] Eventually, Dreamwave II would close shop in mid-2006, selling back the remaining Dreamwave properties to Roger Lee and Dream Engine.^[20]

Mike Costa, writer on IDW Publishing's later Transformers comics, blames Dreamwave for damaging the franchise in the US comics market: on top of some stories being, in his opinion, "not that great", the business crash meant "a lot of people got burned... a lot of stores got defaulted upon because their orders weren't being met".^[21]

Legacy

Despite the ignoble end of the company, Dreamwave has had some lasting impact on the franchise beyond Pat Lee jokes and a damaged perception among comic shops:

• The habit of Cybertronian redesigns for characters began in The War Within.
• The characters of Sunstorm and The Fallen first appeared during Dreamwave's Generation 1 series, and arguably the idea of adding new characters to an 'old' continuity can be credited to their writers. Also introduced during the Dreamwave Generation 1 series was the concept of the Thirteen, which has since been carried over into other franchises.
• The concept of Unicron as a reality-hopping entity was first used for their Armada title and went on to dominate his portrayal for a while.
• They were the first fiction to use the "white Optimus Prime" cab robot of Ultra Magnus's original toy, thereby precipitating countless Optimus repaints from Hasbro.
• Dreamwave were the first to add a "scientist" element to Shockwave's character, which has gone on to be a defining feature of most subsequent incarnations of the character.
• IDW's The Gathering and Megatron Origin both began as Dreamwave stories. Megatron's titular origin story would also go on to influence the Aligned continuity.
• Creators like Don Figueroa, Guido Guidi, and Alex Milne got their start at Dreamwave, and James Raiz got his start in Transformers there.
• Do you like the Micromaster and Action Master personalities on this wiki? A lot of them only exist because of Dreamwave's profile books making them up!

But still, screw Pat Lee.

Series published

Dreamwave G1

• Prime Directive (G1 Volume 1)
• War and Peace (G1 Volume 2)
• Generation 1 Ongoing (G1 Volume 3)
• The War Within
• War Within: The Dark Ages
• War Within: The Age of Wrath
• Transformers: Micromasters

See also:

• Dreamwave timeline
• Dreamwave Generation One continuity

Unicron Trilogy

• Armada
• Energon

Transformers/G.I. Joe

• Transformers/G.I. Joe
• Transformers/G.I. Joe: Divided Front

Other

• Transformers: More than Meets the Eye
• More than Meets the Eye: Transformers: Armada
• 20th Anniversary Transformers Summer Special

See also: Unreleased Dreamwave issues

Japanese release

For better or worse (likely the latter), the Dreamwave comics hold the honor of being the very first Western Transformers comics to be officially translated and published in Japan. They were published by JIVE Ltd. (JIVE American Comics Series) and translated by Eugene Ishikawa and Katsuya Akitomo. Releases began in November 2003 and ended in December 2004.

The graphic novels released in Japan were identical to the ones released in the US (aside from language, of course). The following collections were released:

• Generation 1 Vol. 1
• Generation 1 Vol. 2
• The War Within Vol. 1
• Armada Vol. 1
• Armada Vol. 2
• Armada Vol. 3

This gave Japanese Transformers fans their very first glimpse, at least on an official level, of what Western Transformers comics were like. A very unfortunate first impression, to be sure.

In fiction

Ask Vector Prime

In Quadwal 1215.15 Epsilon, even the GoBots license couldn't stop Dreamwave from cratering themselves! Ask Vector Prime, 21/12/2015

References

External links

• By-issue guides, G1 timeline and information (TFArchive)
• Cross-referenced information about series and creators (Seibertron)
• Unpublished Dreamwave G1 continuity timeline