The Energon Pub

Was just reading through Dreamwave Armada and I found this little gem in the letters page.



"Dreamwave has always been different than the other comic companies in that you appear to be more professional than profit hungry."

Dear oh dear oh dear. Hindsight is 20/20 indeed.

The sad thing is, DreamWave had a much better Transformers product than IDW did when they started. The stories were more interesting and the art was more appealing visually. Unfortunately Pat Lee was an incompetent, greedy, self-centered a--hole and the whole thing went under. I wish a lot of the stories that were started would have been continued by IDW, but instead we got what we got from them. They have improved in subsequent years, but the early IDW stuff was atrocious, to me anyway. That's why I never got into IDW until Regeneration One. Ironically, that ended up being the weakest of IDW's later TF products. In any case, War Within, their best TF story, was never properly finished. I wish IDW would have let Furman at least finish that. This is all my opinion, of course.

I read all of Dreamwave in the past week, and I've gotta say I thought it was alright at best and atrocious at worst. Keeping it to G1 the first two volumes are some of the worst Transformers stories I've ever read, to the extent I'd rate them under the bay movies - and Pat Lee's horrific pencils and not understanding sequential art in the slightest isn't helping matters - while Volume 3 kind of had a few interesting things; you could see they were trying to go for something cool, but at the end of the day it's still hurt by the first two volumes not establishing any mythos or character whatsoever. I honestly think those two volumes are the worst Transformers comics I've ever read; it makes me miss All Hail Megatron. We know nothing about the characters and as soon as it's made aware this isn't supposed to be a continuation of/in-continuity with Sunbow or Marvel, the entire universe falls apart as we realise we know nothing about the characters or the history of this continuity either. Characters are thrown in by the dozen left and right with no personality or introduction (not even a little text box saying their goddamn name), things that are supposed to be 'significant' are downright pointless and barely if ever brought up again (Superion's sacrifice doesn't really seem to effect anything from a narrative standpoint while Grimlock's faction switch was changed back with no consequences whatsoever). It was a terrible read; Sunstorm and Jetfire were nice in Volume 3 but they were too little too late.

The War Within books were also... okay. The first volume is a decent little character study of Optimus but nothing amazing that we haven't seen before; the book's most notable for its Cybertronian designs. (of which some are not that great. Did we really have to go for that stupid windshield thing for Ironhide and Kup?) Dark Ages has a better story - funnily enough, Dreamwave seems to be at its best when Megatron and Optimus are not there - but it's bogged down in a lot of religious nonsense that also hurt Furman's IDW run. Age of Wrath was cut short (thanks Pat Lee. You're such a wonderful person) but it didn't look like it was shaping up to be anything special anyhow; just a dime-a-dozen 'underground rebellion' story.

Micromasters was trash. Nothing else to say, it... it was just trash. I can barely keep track of who's who or what's going on.



So... yeah, I don't really agree with the idea that these stories were particularly good or anywhere near the best. The best Transformers stories they had were Energon and G1 Volume 3, but whoops, Pat Lee being scum pulled the plug on those before they had the chance to truly flourish.

I will say the art's better than I expected because Pat Lee was too lazy to work on any Transformers books other than G1 Volume 1/2 and two entire issues of Armada. The rest of it is pretty alright; though I do have to squint when Figueroa's the artist and Lee's listed as 'Art Director'. I can just see Figueroa's greatness evolving but constantly being suppressed under his, ah, 'superstar artist supreme' boss telling him what to do. Thank god he and a lot of other people found better work later. Even if these stories were any good I wouldn't have wanted them working there a second longer.

Well, I guess to each their own. I agree with 1 point you made, Micromasters was trash. Otherwise, I place DW above IDW in all aspects.

Back in 2004, we were told that Dreamwave was going under. It formally dissolved on 5th Jan. 2005. It was sad but it spurred me on to write fan fiction (TFArchive.com, TFW2005.com and Seibertron.com) and thus was born the Snavejverse!