Depends if you mean their content or the way they conducted their business. The company imploded because of the Lee brothers not paying their talent. As for their Transformers stuff, it wasn't bad. It helped they had some great artists like Don Figueroa, Guido Guidi and Alex Milne to really bring in the readers. I remember getting the first issue and despite Pat Lee's shaky art (it could range from great to terrible in a single issue), the story mirrored the feelings of coming back to the Transformers after so many years away. I was really invested in the newest run with Don Figueroa but it ended with #12 and the company's demise.
Storywise, it was an alright thing. Not entirely innovative, but the comics were fine for their day. Wouldn't mind if these stories were remade, if only for the sake of nostalgia. Artwise it was entirely a mixed bag. The whole "house style" rule led to some fine potential being a little squandered but frankly it was still good for its day unless it was THAT artist. Businesswise it was hot garbage and Pat Lee deserves every roasting.
Yeah Tom Dreamwave kicked my dog and then gave me the finger when I complained. Dreamwave comics was far from perfect, but I have to give them credit for a lot of stuff. They saw promise in transformers in the beginning of a cycle of revival for a lot of 80s properties, brought some concepts that were novel at the time, and made a bunch of art that Hasbro got a ton of mileage out of over the years.
Story wise it felt almost like they were filling in some of the gaps between G1 season 2 and the movie. I was really getting into it. Could have been great, but the talent was screwed over by Pat Lee. He declared bankruptcy fled the country and ran off with the company Porsche and did the same thing a second time with Dream Engine. Often claiming other artist's work was actually his. Didn't pay them for the work and left them with his unpaid bills. Remember Don Figueroa on these very boards begging for help paying off Pat's unpaid FedEx bill, that since they couldn't get Pat for Don got stuck paying. On top of not being paid for 6 or 7 issues worth of art. Pat Lee - Transformers Wiki More info here scroll sown to the controversy section.
I thought it was shit. I hadn't been that hyped for a new comic in a loooong time. The previews of the art looked incredible. Then....the first issue was finally released. The story was so poorly and amateurly written it was virtually unreadable. Pretty art can't save a bad story, and the art was only "pretty" on the covers. The actual sequential storytelling was godawful. I hung in there for about a year, hoping it would improve. It never did. I traded all the issues I'd bought back to the store for store credit and I never regretted it once.
Loved Dreamwave and still do. I think they put a lot of love in those books and set a high bar for art and especially coloring. It's just sad the way it all fell apart.
Most of their original titles like Dark Minds, Echo, and Neon Cyber was just a bad mash-up of popular anime movies like Ghost in the Shell and Akria. Warlands was OK.
We wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for Dreamwave. They started the mainstream G1 nostalgia boom in the West. They awoke the G1 Dragon from its slumber and gave Hasbro the idea to experiment with random G1 homage repaints and name reuses in AEC and Universe, along with a G1 reissue TF Collection subline and culminating in Alternators and Classics. Their art plus simply using season 1-3 characters on comic book covers was instant money in the bank plus megaton hype. Dreamwave Transformer books were hitting the top ten monthly best sellers and their reprints or alternative covers were equally hot sellers. It was bananas how blistering hot these books were. It makes you wonder if Paramount was paying attention to this at the time…
I don't think they did, actually. The original tv series episodes were being re-released on VHS and DVD, Beast Machines was highly anticipated and pushed heavily by fox kids (which then was succeeded by a more traditional sequel series, rid2k1), tshirts with the faction symbols were selling well at the hot topic-esque shops of north america... Etc. Etc. The nostalgia boom (at which g1 was on the forefront) was already underway. Dreamwave, however, I think caught hold of it very early on and were able to ride it in a very influential position as one of the first major pieces of ''revival" media of that era, and the growth of that nostalgia wave, and dreamwave's comics within it, made a hell of a lot of money and got a ton of attention for the brand. I completely agree that that's what got paramount interested and led to the eventual film, though.
I agree to disagree. Beast Machines and RiD were not getting the attention of old G1 fans who had been sleeping on the franchise for 10+ years. G1 Faction shirts are a nice collectible but they never demonstrated that fans craved the original G1 cast. Were G1 DVDs and tapes even sold at the large brick and mortar at that point? Again, this was all small time periphery. And that’s the thing, Dreamwave didn’t demonstrate that Transformers were a cool franchise to follow, they proved that the G1 Cast is what a sleeping fandom wanted to see again. Had Dreamwave done a Beast Machines or RiD comic, no one would have cared. It would have died in two issues. What Dreamwave did was create a G1 revival. It wasn’t about, here’s a hat or a shirt with G1 Starscream. It was, we want G1 Starscream! And that’s what got Hasbro’s attention. And that’s what got old fans to even experiment with RiD and Armada.
No, beast wars and beast machines weren't keeping all the old g1 fans in the brand (though let's be fair, they did keep more than a few), my point with beast machines (even as it... Well... Underperformed, shall we say) was that it had been picked up by one of the biggest kids animation blocks remaining at that time, and was being pushed hard (in a way I don't think beast wars ever got, being mostly syndicated iirc). That created interest again in Transformers from outsiders. And Hasbro even by then I think saw the writing was on the wall, hence them planning the return of some more G1 characters in transtech (or maybe that's just a logical decision after the success to tying beast wars to g1). I'm not sure if rid2k1 was wisdom on hasbros part, or just dumb luck because they needed a new show and had an anime ready as the anime boom was reaching fever pitch, but I think it's safe to say rid2k1 being more similar to the g1 formula caught the attention of a different segment of fandom, and helped some people remember what they loved about g1. I can't say if the g1 tapes/dvds were back in big stores, I don't think they were. Comic and specialty stores mainly. But then again, I don't think I saw the rhino DVDs in mass retail either. It wasnt until the shout factory DVDs years later that I think they were in Walmarts and Best Buys (though I think the 86 movie and soundtrack might be an exception). But at the same time, I don't think I saw any buzz for the dreamwave comic at that time outside of those same comic/specialty shops. They were a huge hit there, I think because the audience like myself was ready for them (and nostalgia in general), but I didnt see many people coming into those shops for DW comics who wouldn't have been there anyway. Within a a year or two though, that dreamwave art was basically all over the place, and was the 'face' of that g1 revival in full swing. Posters at Walmart, hats and t-shirts at Spencer gifts, reissue figures at tru, hell, candy at the drug store. I think seeing those familiar faces in the 'normal' stores got a bunch of kids who grew up with the brand back into it, before the movie kicked that trend back into high gear (even if they never ended up reading the dw comics). I know a bunch of old fans, some who got back in that era, some who never left, who never read the DW comics. They were basically the first thing 'hardcore' g1 fans got before the reissues and 'revival' products started en masse (I think that merchandise was part of a bigger decision/wave that the DW comics were a part of, rather than the trigger for). Maybe those of us who grew up with g1 were just at the right age for nostalgia to drag us back in. It could be this varies from region to region, I'm basing this on my own experiences and what I know from talking with folks over the years. Was it way different around you?
Speak for yourself. I was a mega-Transformers fan from 1984 and I never stopped. Just cause all the normies and casuals hopped aboard around the year 2000 doesn't mean there weren't plenty of us keeping the torch burning that NEVER stopped being fans. If that "renaissance" had never happened, we'd still be around talking about Transformers.
When I said, we wouldn't be here today, I meant-- we wouldn't have the G1 renaissance that's been going on since 2002 when Hasbro started the G1 Commemorative Series of reissues. Since BW started, Hasbro has done a great job of revamping the series with a new cartoon every 1-3 years. That kept the franchise healthy. But Hasbro was happy leaving G1 behind except for the random licensee who wanted to make a hat, shirt or poster. Think about it-- Hasbro knew that Mainframe wanted to incorporate G1 elements into BW ahead of time but did Hasbro produce any G1 reissues of Starscream or Optimus (all prominently featured in BW)? Nope. They were considered neat cameos and a fun way to connect BW to G1 but Hasbro was done with G1. Same with Takara. RiD was their idea but it was a complete reimagining of G1. They also felt G1 was just nostalgia that only worked with reissues. Dreamwave showed that older fans didn't just want robots that turned into cars and jets, they wanted the G1 characters. You're making my point. Dreamwave was the face of G1 merchandising because Dreamwave created the revival. Why else would Takara put Dreamwave art on their TF Collection boxes? Or Hasbro use Dreamwave art on their TF Collection boxes? It's not a coincidence that Dreamwave G1 comics were literally outselling most Marvel and DC books at the time AND Hasbro and Takara paid notice. Hasbro literally used a Dreamwave artist (Don Figueroa) to design Classics Optimus Prime. Hasbro literally started the whole "Ultra Magnus is a white Optimus" repaint because of Dreamwave. We wouldn't have had the G1 revival without Dreamwave. I mean, if Dreamwave had never occurred, it was always possible that Hasbro would have attempted something with G1. Anything is possible. But Dreamwave made this current revival happen. That's what I mean, "We wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for Dreamwave." We'd still be fans and collectors but we wouldn't have WFC and Legacy like we have it.
I think that's still a hell of a stretch to claim that a comic book that maybe a few thousand people bought somehow led to Hasbro and Takara rethinking the entire toyline and Paramount making the movie series, etc. I guess we can really give credit to Wizard magazine for their article with Dreamwave art that started everything. If not for Wizard magazine, we wouldn't even be here.
Wouldn't say it led to Paramount getting interested in the movies, though it's possible. But at the time you need to understand where many people were. I was in college at the time, 80's nostalgia was a big thing people wanted to watch the old shows they remembered, but at the time most were impossible or hard to find. The only G1 Transformers VHS you could easily find around that time was the 86 movie. To get old episodes, you either had to find a old rental store with tapes and make copies or get the few available at retail imported from Canada. And they were around $25 to $30 a piece and you usually got two to four episodes a tape. DVD players wouldn't become more affordable till the PS2 came out and that was most people's first DVD player (at least around my college) I was making money in college by selling copies of old TV shows that I'd make dupes of from VHS tapes i bought or from copies I made from rental stores. Transforers, Gi Joe, Street Hawk, all sorts of 80's stuff (hell anime wasn't main stream yet so I was making money selling copies of fansubbed tapes as well) The only way to get classic toys was buying from comic shops or specialty stores in the outlet malls who way over charged for them or this new thing online called EBAY (Which back then didn't have the buyer protection they have now) And back then this was when the guy in the specialty store would hit every toys r us buy all the rares and and charge $100 a piece for them. And unless you got lucky and found one on teh shelf or at con he was the only way to get the figure most of the time. (Dark times) Most old school fans weren't too excited about the Beast Wars/Machine figures and made fun of them at comic stores. Wizard wouldn't even feature them in their toy sections and usually made joke about primal throwing excrement at g1 characters. People wanted Transforming vehicles over animals with the same level of articulation as the beast figures and there weren't may options. Around here at the time the phase "Trukk not Munkey" was often at the bottom of people posts. TFW was sharing a couple episodes of Car robots subbed and people were importing them just to get a Truck prime again. I remember importing a lot of them. Hell I was importing these little non transforming luck of the draw PVC figures just to get g1 characters again. Then Dreamwave came along and it was what many of us wanted, adult oriented version of the old cartoon. People were really excited about it. Sales were really good for Dreamwave(Pat lee Bought a Porsche with the money) This and other things were proving to Hasboro and Takara that people wanted G1 characters again. The next year after the series did do well Hasboro would unveil MP-01 and the alternators line in Toyfare magazine and the fandom went nuts. As I said Wizard hated the beasts and devoted a lot of the issue to the new figures. People were really excited. This was back when Toyfair got exclusives, so this didn't leak out on the net like the info does today. That magazine was the first time anyone saw it. And the board was going nuts over it.2002 was also the same year Rhino would release the first box set and people could finally start getting all the episodes. After that the brand started getting big again with the non geek crowd as well as the fans. Nostalgia for the series was really high. That's when Paramount probably started getting interested.
Was that lecture aimed at me? Bit of a waste of time typing all that out, if that's the case. I was there. I remember all of that. In fact, I think I remember it better than you based on some of the generalities you wrote.
I was one of those G1 guys that never went away and was following every iteration of Transformers, when Dreamwave comics came out I was amazed by the art and colors. While dreamwaves business practices and a few mini series wasn’t great, the overall whole(especially for that time) was really good in my opinion. I see some of the artist names listed above, but I didn’t see James Raiz and Joe Ng listed, 2 guys I thought did a great job, but just never get mentioned anymore.
Back then I was with the brand regardless and supporting it thanks to a fairly steady supply of G1 toy reissues and trying the current stuff from time to time. I liked picking up and reading Dreamwave at the time, and will still defend Volume 2 as pretty good stuff overall, but I wouldn't have blinked if it never existed. I'll go further and say I wish Volume 1 never happened and it started with 2's story anyway. #2 pretty much started with the cartoon status quo before Magnus' crew showed up, and the only main things from #1 was Sparkplug's fate (would have been fine if that never happened and he survived retired), Superion's sacrifice and Grimlock's defection, that latter two not being brought up much, and the Grimlock stuff ended up being a non-issue.
