| Dreamwave |
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Information AboutDreamwave |
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| comic book publishing companies of canada | |
| defunct comics and manga publishers | |
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HISTORY In 1996, Pat Lee and Roger Lee founded Dreamwave Productions as an imprint under Image Comics and published their first miniseries, '' Darkminds ''. They quickly made their Manga -influenced style a trademark, merging the look of an Animated Film with Sequential Art . In 2002, Dreamwave splintered off from Image and became an independent publishing company after acquiring the license for the popular '', a series detailing previously-undocumented aspects of the Transformers' past. Many artistic members of the fan community, such as Don Figueroa and Guido Guidi , were hired by the company, entering the professional world of comics via their hobby. Three years later, signs of trouble began to appear when G1 writers James McDonough and Adam Patyk left the company over pay disputes. Despite plans for their replacement, it was subsequently announced that Dreamwave had gone out of business. They cited ''"the shrinking comic book market combined with a weak U.S. dollar"'' as the cause of the closure on January 4 2005 , although a month of rumours and speculation had all but made this a forgone conclusion amongst readers. The final Dreamwave comic was published in December 2004, leaving incomplete both limited series and multiple ongoing storylines. As Dreamwave's website was shut down, a new site, Dreamengine , registered by Roger Lee, was launched. CONTROVERSY One of the most common complaints about ''Dreamwave'' productions had to do with the nature of the series sets of their comics. Most of their series were a single story arc 6-8 issues long. When that story arc was finished, it would start anew, sometimes with the same characters in a different situation in time. An example would be . Though this has since become standard practice in the comic book world, Pat Lee, whose signature art work predominated almost all of Dreamwave's comics, would draw the first several issues of the series generating large amounts of hype for the series as 'Pat Lee drawn'. Then, Lee would leave the series several issues before the conclusion to begin another project, leaving the series with another artist and digital colourist who could not match the quality of the visuals produced by Lee himself. The hype generated would quickly implode and the series would hit mediocrity in the process. This occurred on his breakthrough series . However, most of the controversy surrounding ''Dreamwave'' suddenly came to light in its closing days, when it became apparent that the company had been neglecting to pay many more of its employees than just McDonough and Patyk. When a list of the company's debts surfaced online, it became apparent that ''Dreamwave'' owed in excess of a million dollars. Most telling about the business practises and what company money was spent on was that two of the very few items on the list marked "secured" were Pat and Roger's BMW s. Several artists including Figueroa and Guidi, having previously remained genial on the matter, came forward and aired their grievances with the company, which as of April 2005, included having to pay FedEx for shipping art they never got paid for in the first place. As the company went under, Pat Lee maintained ownership of his Porsche sports car, and acquired a luxurious apartment in Canada. RELAUNCH On August 2 2005 Christian Dery purchased all of the companies assets in a bankruptcy auction. Dery stated he had intended to enter into comic book publishing and the opportunity to begin with "a catalogue of such strong existing titles was too good to pass up." The Transformers license and similar third-party properties were not included, but along with all marks and logos the purchase included ''Warlands'', ''Neon Cyber'', ''Shidima'', ''Fate of the Blade'', ''Garden of Blades'', ''Limbo City'', '' Arkanium '', ''Necrowar'', ''Dark Minds'', ''Capsoul'', and ''Sandscape'' properties. Now holder of the "Dreamwave" trademark, Dery intends to relaunch the properties under the Dreamwave Entertainment label in 2006. Several former Dreamwave Productions employees and creators are participating to this new venture. LIST OF DREAMWAVE COMICS Mini-series
Ongoing series
EXTERNAL LINKS
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