by wadapan
In 2002, Dreamwave Productions (a studio within Image Comics) went independent to launch their flagship title, using the Transformers license acquired from Hasbro. By 2005, founders Pat and Roger Lee had funnelled the company’s assets into a new company and declared bankrupcy, leaving a great many writers and artists unpaid for their work (a cumulative debt in excess of a million dollars) and cancelling all their comics without fanfare.
Nowadays, these stories are mostly interesting purely for the historical context they provide for the franchise as a whole. If, for some reason, you trick yourself into thinking you want to read them, the following list provides a reading order.
Generation One
The ’80s Transformers characters returned to comic pages for the first time in years in a special preview issue setting up a six-issue series by Chris Sarracini. Written in 2002, the comic leaned heavily on the context of it having been many years since the airing of the Sunbow cartoon (which served as a very loose backstory) while also strongly evoking the then-recent 9/11 attacks. No, really. Although the comic was a bestseller, thanks in part to the detailed designs of its characters, it drew criticism for its poor visual storytelling and is now widely considered one of the worst Transformers comics ever made. The trade paperback included a short story intended to set up a second series, but a change in writers led to Dreamwave’s next present-day run mostly ignoring it.
Simon Furman began fleshing out the backstory for Dreamwave’s new continuity with a six-issue series set on Cybertron, with art by notable fan-artist Don Figueroa. A special preview story slotted in between issues #2 and #3. The series is best remembered for being the first to give unique Cybertronian designs to all of its characters, and Furman went on to incorporate concepts introduced in his Dreamwave stories into later comics.
The popularity of The War Within prompted a second six-issue miniseries, set after an ambiguous timeskip and featuring (heavily modified by the inker) artwork from Andrew Wildman. It’s notable for introducing The Fallen to the Transformers mythos.
A third six-issue miniseries, written by Furman with art by Joe Ng, was abruptly cancelled after three issues due to Dreamwave’s bankrupcy. Issue #4 was entirely completed, but not all of the finished pages have seen the light of day; Furman later released scripts for issues #4 and #5 along with his outline for issue #6.
Fledgling paperback publisher iBooks released three novels set between Prime Directive and War and Peace. Author Scott Ciencin did apparently little research into Transformers, and his novel Hardwired ended up consisting mostly of gratuitous sex-and-gore. The novel’s two sequels, Annihilation and Fusion, were written by David Cian and were generally considered more readable.
While Furman worked on The War Within, James McDonough wrote the six-issue followup to Prime Directive under his “Brad Mick” psuedonym, dropping most of the previous run’s beats by moving the action to Cybertron as quickly as possible. The series is an early example of a 2000s Transformers story copying a great many superficial elements from The Transformers: The Movie.
When the Generation One comic graduated into a full ongoing series, beginning with a preview issue #0, McDonough soon brought on co-writer Adam Patyk. The first story arc told across issues #1-6 was to have been titled Ascension when released as a trade paperback.
20th Anniversary Transformers Summer Special
A special issue was published with four stories set in four different continuities. James McDonough and Adam Patyk wrote “Welcome to the Jungle”, which followed up on a thread from issue #4 of the Generation One ongoing, along with the Beast Wars story “Ain’t No Rat” and the Robots in Disguise story “Ultra Magnus…to the Rescue?”. These served as pitches for two new Dreamwave series, with fans getting to choose between them, but Dreamwave’s bankrupcy meant that neither materialised (Beast Wars won the vote, and Simon Furman scripted an issue for a miniseries, Shell Game, which was later retooled as The Gathering under IDW—see our reading guide). For this anthology issue itself, Furman contributed the Energon story “Perspective” (see below).
McDonough and Patyk wrote a four-issue flashback miniseries about Micromasters, tying into a plot point from issue #5 of their ongoing. It’s notable for being one of the only bits of fiction to ever put Micromasters in the spotlight, which is a shame, because it’s pretty bad.
The ongoing continued for four issues before stopping dead in its tracks. Aside from solicitations and covers for following issues, McDonough and Patyk have not commented on their plans for the story, as by the point of Dreamwave’s closure they had been unpaid for a large amount of their writing. However, Furman’s outline for a fill-in story for issue #14, “The Enemy Within”—which picked up threads from his War Within comics—has made it online.
One of Dreamwave’s biggest lasting legacies is the set of profiles written by McDonough and Patyk for every “Generation 1” character, published across eight issues. The first and last issues each included a one-page framing story set in the far future of the Dreamwave continuity.
Genesis: The Art of Transformers
Hasbro had initially planned to partner with Dreamwave to create the first ever western Transformers artbook, though the book had a complicated and troubled release. Still, it included original pieces by a large number of Dreamwave’s staple artists.
Simon Furman wrote a non-fiction book for Doring Kindersley covering the entire history of the franchise. Its in-universe details draw entirely from Dreamwave’s continuity, with Furman using it as an opportunity to flesh out underdeveloped aspects of his stories.
A fair few Dreamwave and IDW assets formed the basis of a later how-to-draw guidebook from Doring Kindersley, also written by Furman. It included a one-page example comic depicting a fight between Devastator and the Dinobots.
As bonus material for their DVD releases of the Sunbow cartoon, Metrodome threw in a two-part original comic by Darren Jamieson, set in a Sunbow-inspired continuity but drawing direct stylistic influence from Dreamwave’s work at the time—right down to the part where it’s kind of bad!
A bunch of freelance writers were contracted to write short stories for an anthology, edited by Trilogy author David Cian. With exception of the stories by Simon Furman and Robert N. Skir—covered in our Marvel reading guide—the rest were by people who hadn’t written for the franchise before (or since), and were set in a variety of continuities, drawing heavily from The Ultimate Guide (given to the authors as reference), but rarely fit exactly into canon; the following list simply gives the closest approximations for the settings:
- “Collect and Save” by Tim Waggoner (Sunbow)
- “Paddles” by Jean Rabe (Sunbow)
- “Redemption Center” by Alexander B. Potter (Sunbow)
- “Something Robotic This Way Comes” by John J. Miller (Dreamwave Armada)
- “Two for the Price of One” by Brandie Tarvin (Dreamwave Generation 1)
- “Joyride” by Jenifer A. Ruth (Sunbow)
- “Lonesome Diesel” by David Bischoff (The Ultimate Guide)
- “Prime Spark” by Sean P. Fodera (Armada cartoon, Beast Wars, Beast Machines)
- “Parts” by Donald J. Bingle (Dreamwave Generation 1)
- “Healers, Fighters, and Transformers” by J. Steven York (Sunbow)
- “Fire in the Dark” by John Helfers (Armada, Beast Wars)
The Unicron Trilogy
Dreamwave’s Armada comic began with a short preview issue, and its five-issue First Contact arc was written by Chris Sarracini, covering the transition from Cybertron to Earth.
Chris Sarracini was also commissioned to write four short comics to be packed in with Armada toys. Not overtly tying into his main Dreamwave series, but picking up from the same Earth-based status quo established by its end, these continued into the future of the Unicron Battles subline of the toys.
Brandon Easton (who later wrote the little-liked Deviations and M.A.S.K. for IDW) contributed a special Free Comic Book Day story, which you may as well read between Sarracini and Furman’s runs.
When Sarracini dropped the ongoing to work on an Optimus Prime series (which never materialised), Furman took over for the Fortress arc—but to promote the Unicron Battles subline of the toys, he ended up having to shift the direction of the story significantly for the four-part Worlds Collide arc.
Concurrently with his work for Dreamwave, Furman wrote comics for a UK-exclusive Armada magazine. These occasionally reused material from his Dreamwave scripts, but made up a standalone continuity. Starting with issue #3, a Tales of the Mini-Cons series of backup strips began. Due to poor sales, the magazine was cancelled before the publication of issue #10, for which some story details have been made public.
In 2004, to promote Atari’s Armada game for the PlayStation 2, Furman gathered some of the Marvel UK old guard to produce a comic explicitly intended as the TFUK counterpart to the Dreamwave series he was working on at the time, with this eleven-page pack-in comic set in the game’s continuity.
More than Meets the Eye: Armada
McDonough and Patyk continued their series of profiles with a brand new three-issue set for Armada. The first and last issues included short framing stories set between Armada and Energon. Another three-issue followup was intended to accompany Energon, but went unpublished, and the text from those profiles has never surfaced.
After a ten-year timeskip, the Energon comic continued the numbering of Armada starting with issue #19. Like Armada, it was slated to run for eighteen issues, but the final six-issue arc was never released aside from outlines on Furman’s blog. The short Energon comic “Perspective” from the 20th Anniversary Transformers Summer Special is set in the six-month timeskip leading into that final arc.
As with Armada before it, the Energon toyline included pack-in comics with the toys. The writer of the first of these is unknown; the second and third were written by Simon Furman, vaguely in keeping with his ongoing series, while the fourth is simply a translation of a Naoto Tsushima manga produced to be packed in with certain Takara Super Link toys. Years later, Fun Publications (see our reading guide) would produce a pack-in mini-comic of their own to bridge the Armada and Energon series, but this was very much a post-facto fanwork, not hewing exactly to the style and content of the original comics.
G.I. Joe
At the time, the G.I. Joe comic license was held by Devil’s Due Press, with that of Transformers in the hands of Dreamwave. In what appears to be a tit-for-tat exchange, both companies granted the other access to their license, allowing for the publication of two concurrent (and unrelated) crossover series. The Devil’s Due series was six issues written by Josh Blaylock, occasional G.I. Joe writer, and had a fairly pulp-fiction tone.
G.I. Joe vs. the Transformers II
The story’s four-issue sequel series was written by Dan Jolley (later head writer on the War for Cybertron video game, incidentally), who had co-written issue #6 of the first series with Blaylock. Its plot involved Transformers being scattered through time, with G.I. Joe travelling to return them to the present.
G.I. Joe vs the Transformers: The Art of War
A five-issue third instalment was penned by Tim Seeley, the artist of the second series (and indeed a great many other G.I. Joe stories with Devil’s Due), who’d previously written an issue of G.I. Joe.
G.I. Joe vs the Transformers: Black Horizon
The last story in the continuity was told across two double-length issues, and was again written by Seeley.
Concurrently with Devil’s Due Press’s six-issue crossover, Dreamwave produced a series of their own. A period piece by John Ney Rieber, it was set in an alternate-universe WWII, with the Autobots and Decepticons being given contemporary vehicle modes by Don Figueroa (though the series was illustrated by Jae Lee, whose art had a moody tone that—while perfect for the story—was a little hard to follow at times).
Transformers/G.I. Joe: Divided Front
James McDonough and Adam Patyk were hired once again to write a sequel (timeskipping forward fifty years, and significantly changing tone in the process), but finally walked out on Dreamwave after just a single issue; Sarracini was slated to write the rest, with solicitations and cover art for the remaining issues being released, but it’s possible interior art was never even created beyond the first issue.
Resources
- Solicitations for unreleased Dreamwave issues
- “The Enemy Within” outline
- Beast Wars: Shell Game #1 script
- Energon #30 recap
- Energon #31 outline (Part 1)
- Energon #31 outline (Part 2)
- Energon #32 outline (Part 1)
- Energon #32 outline (Part 2)
- Energon #33 outline (Part 1)
- Energon #33 outline (Part 2)
- Energon #34 outline (Part 1)
- Energon #34 outline (Part 2)
- Energon #35 outline (Part 1)
- Energon #35 outline (Part 2)
- Energon #36 outline
- Interview with The Beast Within writer Darren Jamieson
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