2002 BotCon Dreamwave Panel

Participating in the Dreamwave panel were Simon Furman, Adam Fortier, Pat Lee, Derek Choo-Wing, and Chris Sarracini. They were, unfortunately, not the greatest public speakers, but we shouldn't really expect them to be as comfortable with a crown as the actors or Hasbro's PR people were. Still, it was a little frustrating at times to have them ramble.

After the G2 comic collections from Titan are completed, they'll start at the beginning of the US G1 series. All the US comic collections will have a Diamond-exclusive hardback edition. Simon wants these hardbacks to have art by people who don't normally do Transformers art (like John Byrne's upcoming cover) while the paperbacks will continue to have Wildman art that all links together. The UK comic collections will, in general at least, not have hardcover editions. The Target 2006 hardcover is special for the Transforce convention.

Left to right: Simon Furman, Adam Fortier, Pat Lee, Derek Choo-Wing & Chris Sarracini

Dreamwave is planning to do roughly one 6-issue G1 miniseries each year. They are putting together their own G1 continuity which will house all of their G1 books, including The War Within. They're constructing it more or less as they see fit, using the G1 toon and comic as a basis, and changing things when they want to.

They are also planning a TF Universe-like book of character profiles. This book will cover all of Generation One, with 371 separate characters. It begins in November and will consist of four 96 page books. All of the artwork will be new. The contents of the profiles will be written by them (a specific author(s) was not mentioned) and will reflect their amalgamated continuity. They may do later profile books for other series, such as Beast Wars, but it's uncertain if they will. All they know is that they'd like to do it.

Dreamwave does not currently have the rights to do anything with Japanese exclusive characters. That would have to be done through Takara instead of Hasbro, and they've not made any efforts.

Pat Lee and Chris Sarracini signing autographs.

When asked about their art models, Pat Lee described how he sort of takes elements that he likes from various pictures of the characters and constructs a new one that he likes. None of that is especially surprising. I was disappointed, though, to hear no mention of the Studio OX models which Dreamwave has used *extensively* in creating their own models, going as far as essentially copying several OX portraits for their own posters.

Pat explained that he's been drawing Devastator as absolutly huge simply because being "big" is part of what defines Devastator as a character. (Perhaps the only thing that defines him, if you ask me.) So, Pat draws him big. Adam Fortier interjected to say that we have plenty of Transformers that change their size when they transform already, so it's not like any fundamental rules are being broken by having Dev grow.

Chris Sarracini is a high school teacher in Toronto.

That old "TFs fighting in the sky over Cybertron" picture that Pat Lee drew for Wizard magazine a couple years ago is what started the whole thing off for them. It all built on that first picture and sort of snowballed.

The Armada comic will follow the main plot of the toon, but will explore areas that the cartoon doesn't focus on, as well as give the Mini-Cons dialogue instead of just beeps and bloops. The kids (Rad et. al.) *will* be in the comic book.

Adam Fortier showing original Dreamwave art work.

An upcoming "mega-lithograph" has been advertised. It will be 3 feet by five feet, and consists of all of the mini-posters from the insides of the G1 books (twelve in all; six issues times two covers each), which all link together into a giant picture with hundreds of characters.