Dreamwave Productions was a Canadian art design studio and comic book publisher founded in 1996. Best known for its comic book adaptations of Transformers, the company shut down on January 4, 2005.
Brothers Pat Lee and Roger Lee founded Dreamwave Productions in Toronto, Canada in 1996 as an imprint under Image Comics,[citation needed] publishing their first mini-series Darkminds.[citation needed] Pat maintained artistic control while Roger managed the business operations.[citation needed] Dreamwave split off from Image Comics in April 2002.[1]
Dreamwave acquired the license for the Transformers toyline from Hasbro in December 2001.[citation needed]The first mini-series, written by Chris Sarracini & drawn by Pat Lee and based on the Transformers: Generation 1 characters, was the top-selling book on the sales charts for its entire run.[citation needed] Various Transformers ongoing and limited series followed, covering various continuities within the Transformers franchise.[citation needed]
On January 4, 2005, Dreamwave announced that it had gone out of business and closed down, citing "the shrinking comic book market combined with a weak U.S. dollar" as the reason for their closure.[2]
According to the terms of the contract the company had with Federal Express, its freelancers were left liable for the cost of shipping their unpublished, unpaid for work to Canada. Guido Guidi and Don Figueroa were two such freelancers affected.[3]
After the company's bankruptcy in January 2005, Dreamwave's assets were auctioned off on August 2, 2005 and purchased by Canadian entrepreneur Christian Dery, who planned to relaunch its original properties.[4] However, the new Dreamwave have not published nor announced the publishing of any titles since the 2005 announcement.
IDW Publishing acquired the Transformers license in May 2005 and began publishing new Transformers comics in 2006.[5]
^Stump, Greg (July 2005). "Transformers Line Picked Up by IDW, Though Creators Still Have Reason to Gripe". The Comics Journal (269): 53. ISSN0194-7869.
