推荐优秀漫画DW版本《变形金刚》
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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
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 McGunness, 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
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 USA, 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]
“ Looking back, I'm glad I didn't do any work for Dreamwave... at the time, I'd have worked for free but it turns out everyone else at Dreamwave was doing that anyway. ”
—Nick Roche [22]
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 the IDW, Prime and Cyberverse 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.
