THE TRANSFORMERS: COMICS, BOOKS AND MANGA

With Transformers' value as a nostalgia property growing at the start of the 21st Century, and the immediate success of Devil's Due's new GIJoe comic book, Hasbro decided to award the license for Transformers comics to the small Canadian Image spin-off company Dreamwave.

Vice Chairman and star artist Pat Lee had already drawn Transformers as a poster for Wizard magazine, and set about preparing for a new six-part mini-series starring the original characters - it would actually be the first official Transformers media to use the phrase "Generation One".

The series used the latest in comic book technology, allowing individual frames to be drawn to a large size, then digitally shrunk to the correct size, plus computer composition and colouring.

A seven-page preview comic, drawn by Lee and written by Chris Sarracini, was issued at the start of 2002, with the limited series to commence in February. While Dreamwave had harboured hopes of a hit, they were taken by surprise by the #1 selling success of the comic book, so much so that reprints had to be commissioned in order to meet demands.

Plans for a second series were mooted, and an exclusive preview was included in the Volume 1 TPB, with the original plot arc now named "The Prime Directive". However, at this point scribe Sarracini was dropped and replaced by the mysterious Brad Mick. The series appeared to be rewritten, and was now titled "War and Peace". It went on sale in February 2003, and repeated the success of its forerunner, this time also receiving much more positive fan reaction.

As well as branching out the Generation 1 brand via crossovers with Devil's Due's GIJoe series and their own Transformers Armada, Dreamwave confirmed an ongoing Generation 1 series, beginning in December 2003.

This was again to be written by Brad Mick, with help from Adam Patyk. The series began in December 2003 with Issue #0, featuring art from Don Figueroa, Lee and newcomer Joe Ng. It was promptly followed by Issue #1, which saw Figueroa take over full-time as sole penciller. It also introduced Sunstorm, a character recently issued in Japan, for a six-issue arc. This was well-received, though sales had slipped down another notch. Issue #4 featured a second back-up strip, drawn by James Raiz, and #6 saw Brad Mick revealed as James McDonough. After a positive start, the title stagnated over the next four issues, with a number of delays, but worse was to come. McDonough and Patyk left Dreamwave, citing a large amounts of outstanding pay as their reason. Chris Sarracini was announced as new writer, due to take over from #11, with Pat Lee rejoining as artist. Sarracini planned to take two issues to wrap up McDonough & Patyk's storylines, before moving on to his own work. However, before these plans could be put into action, Dreamwave hit financial problems, losing the Transformers license, and ending their plans for the title.