Pat Lee

This article is about Pat Lee, the superstar comic book artist. For the uncredited artist who actually drew all his stuff for negligible pay, see Alex Milne.

Patrick "Pat" Lee (ミチヤメノテヒ フナナ Michiyamenotehi Funana) is a Canadian artist. He was the president of Dreamwave Productions and (allegedly) drew some of their Transformers comics, until most of his employees noticed he wasn't paying them. Subsequently, he was also the president of Dream Engine until all its employees noticed he wasn't paying them either. After that, he founded his own company, Pat Lee Productions, and either worked for or headed a variety of Hong Kong-based companies, which all appear to have gone out of business since. He also (allegedly) continues doing comic work for increasingly obscure publishers that have no shame.

Known titles, aliases and nicknames: Mr. Mecha,^[2] Paticus,^[3] "Transman",^[4] Superstar Artist,^[5] Mr. Talented^[6]

“	Over my dead body.	”
—Simon Furman on if Pat Lee will do work for IDW, BotCon 2008

Contents 1 History 1.1 Before the Transformers 1.2 Transformers by Dreamwave 1.3 After Dreamwave 1.4 Return to official Transformers work 2 Published Transformers works with Pat Lee credit 2.1 Comics 2.2 Packaging art 2.2.1 Alternators 2.2.2 Commemorative Series 2.2.3 The Transformers Collection 2.3 Other 3 Criticism and controversy 3.1 Art style 3.2 Business practices 3.3 Failure to give proper credit 3.4 Attempts at cover-up 4 Notes 5 Memorable quotes by and about Pat Lee 6 See also 7 External links 8 References

History

Before the Transformers

Pat Lee was born in Montreal on June 28, 1975,^[7] and raised in Toronto. At the age of 16 (or 17),^[8] right after graduating from high school, Lee was eager to find a job as a "proffesional"[sic] in the comic book industry,^[8] sending over 150 pages of sample artworks to Marvel and DC. Unfortunately for Lee, both publishers realized what a shoddy artist he was. Unfortunately for the rest of the world, however, Lee eventually managed to catch the attention of infamous Image Comics co-founder Rob Liefeld at a Toronto convention in 1994, who would hire Lee (now aged 19) to work as a penciller on various titles for Liefeld's Image studio Extreme Studios. After that, Pat Lee would also work for Jim Lee's Image studio Wildstorm Productions, as well as accepting work-for-hire assignments from Marvel (who had now apparently changed their mind regarding his artwork).

In 1996, Pat and his brother Roger decided to start their own studio within Image Comics, Dreamwave Productions, with Pat acting as the company's president. With Dreamwave, Lee would continue accepting contractual work for other publishers (such as the four-issue limited series Wolverine/Punisher: Revelation for Marvel), but also started to publish his own blatantly plagiarized originally created titles such as Darkminds and Warlands. Collaborations with various magazines and advertising campaigns helped to further advance Dreamwave's reputation. Initially, the "hook" for Dreamwave's financial success was Pat's drawing style, which many readers viewed as "manga-like" (although readers of actual manga had a different opinion on this matter).

Transformers by Dreamwave

In 2000, Pat and Dreamwave submitted a contribution for a feature named "Big 80s" that was published in issue #111 of Wizard: The Comics Magazine, depicting Pat's own take on one of his favorite properties from his childhood days, the Transformers. Proving to be a huge hit among fans, Hasbro would consider the general art style a benchmark when they were offering the license for a new Transformers comic a year later.^[3] Unsurprisingly, it was Dreamwave themselves who finally acquired said license, commemorating this as a turning point in the history of their company by officially cutting all ties with Image and becoming an independent publisher on their own.

In addition to providing the art for various adverts, posters and covers, Pat would draw the first two Generation 1 limited series, Vol. 1 (aka "Prime Directive") and Vol. 2: War and Peace. Subsequently, he would concentrate on controlling Dreamwave as its president and spend more time on his biggest hobby, fast cars, assigning art jobs to other artists (many of them hired directly out of the fandom) instead. Lee's only other major contribution in terms of art would ultimately be some of the character profiles published in the eight-issue More than Meets the Eye limited series.

Despite having dominated Diamond's sales charts for several subsequent months with the Transformers, Dreamwave eventually ended up in dire financial circumstances. Coinciding with rumors of unpaid freelancers, Pat Lee started to accept contractual work for Marvel and DC again, such as issues of House of M or Superman/Batman. Dreamwave eventually declared bankruptcy on January 4, 2005, blaming the weak United States Dollar and other scapegoats for the company's failure.^[9]

After Dreamwave

With Dream Engine, Lee would work on various projects such as an X-Men/Fantastic Four crossover for Marvel, issues for the Batman/Superman series for DC and a relaunch of Cyberforce for Top Cow, another Image studio.

Eventually, Pat Lee parted ways with Dream Engine again and started his new enterprise, Pat Lee Productions.^[10] He was also listed as the "director" of a Hong Kong-based company named DeepSky Pictures, and alongside his brother Roger, he headed a company named Triple Eye Productions, both of which are no longer in business. Pat Lee is currently residing in Hong Kong, where he acts as one of the heads of an IP development company named Secret Lab, Ltd., which at this time holds the questionable record of being the Pat Lee-run company to remain in business for the longest period of time.^[11]

In 2011, Pat Lee was connected as a designer on Train Heroes, a cartoon produced by TV Tokyo and China-based Carloon Animation.^[12] It later turned out that the show had similarities with the earlier anime Chō Tokkyū Hikarian, both featuring trains that turned into super-deformed robots.^[13]

Return to official Transformers work

In mid-2008, three and a half years since the collapse of Dreamwave, Lee was commissioned to do a series of illustrations for Hasbro Hong Kong to use for promotional purposes as part of their appearance at Ani-Con 2008.^[14] Let's hope that art stays in Hong Kong.

In spite of the movie having been out for about a year, he couldn't even be bothered to look up recent art and stills and drew Megatron with his unused concept art head.

Published Transformers works with Pat Lee credit

Comics

• Transformers: Generation 1 (vol. 1): Preview, #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6
• Transformers: Generation 1 vol. 2: War and Peace: Preview, #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6
• Transformers: More than Meets the Eye #1, #3, #6 (assorted profiles)
• Transformers: Armada: #6, #7
• Transformers Armada: More Than Meets The Eye: #1, #2, #3 (assorted profiles)
• 20th Anniversary Transformers Summer Special: Individual story "Welcome to the Jungle"
• assorted covers for nearly all the Dreamwave Transformers series
• Transformers: Matrix Quest (Titan Books, hardcover) cover image
• Transformers/G.I. Joe: Divided Front: #1

Packaging art

Alternators

• Smokescreen
• Side Swipe

Commemorative Series

• Series III Autobot Jazz
• Series IV Prowl
• Series IV Red Alert
• Series V Hoist
• Series V Inferno
• Series VI Autobot Grapple
• Series VII Rodimus Prime
• Series VII Dirge
• Series VIII Side Swipe

The Transformers Collection

• No.0 Convoy (Optimus Prime)
• No.1 Meister (Jazz)
• No.2 Prowl
• No.6 Megatron
• No.7 Lambor (Sideswipe)
• No.10 Soundwave
• No.12 Minibot Team
• No.16 Insectrons (Insecticons)

Other

• Hasbro Hong Kong Ani-Con 2008 Movie Commemorative boxset certificate

Criticism and controversy

Art style

Pat Lee's artwork has often been the target of criticism among fans. While he was initially praised by many fans for his "manga-like" drawing style (which is heavily inspired by the character designs and visual cues used by Studio OX), others criticized his tendency for exaggerated proportions, emphasis on rounded robot body parts, making the characters look "inflated" and marshmallow-like, hands reaching out to the reader "as if you just stole his purse", a general lack of sequential storytelling skills and the overall look of his human characters (see "dull surprise" for more on that). Even his critics often admitted that his work for covers and posters was better than his actual comic book interior artwork; however, that would change soon when even his cover artwork saw a severe decline in quality starting with the second Generation 1 limited series. The introduction of other artists who drew Transformers characters in a similar style, while avoiding many of the problems Lee was criticized for, would further shift the public opinion against Lee's artwork.

Lee's response to that was enforcing an internal "house style" that would force other artists to follow Pat Lee's own style more closely. Don Figueroa confirmed in an interview having received such requests from Dreamwave art director Rob Ruffolo, a guideline which Figueroa declined.^[16] Fellow artist Guido Guidi confirmed having received similar requests.^[17] Ruffolo himself also later confirmed the existence of an internal "house style", without specifically referring to Lee.^[18]

Even though many fans preferred other artists over Pat Lee, official Dreamwave press releases and solicitations would often refer to the company's president as a "superstar artist".^[19]

Business practices

The demise of Dreamwave didn't come overnight. The first rumors of freelancers not getting paid date back as far as October 2003.^[20] Following the closure of Dreamwave, former freelance writers Adam Patyk and James McDonough reiterated their claims that Dreamwave (not explicitly referring to Lee himself) had stopped paying them even before declaring bankruptcy. They had then filed a lawsuit against their former employer, and when that became public, they had allegedly also heard from other Dreamwave employees and freelancers who were supposedly also complaining about not being paid anymore.^[21]

Aside from Patyk and McDonough, no other former Dreamwave employees or freelancers were nearly as explicit on the issue. Artist Don Figueroa only stated that Dreamwave was "getting really behind with the check" and pointed out that he "was also assured everything was cool" when he met Pat Lee in person only a month prior to the closing of Dreamwave.^[16] The latter complaint was also repeated by writer Simon Furman.^[22] Likewise, artist Guido Guidi merely accused Dreamwave of a lack of "[g]ood communication", and even revealed an ambivalent attitude towards Pat Lee and his brother Roger.^[17] Artist James Raiz, meanwhile, claimed that he was "one of the very few who came out of Dreamwave with all [his] money".^[23]

Prior to declaring bankruptcy, Pat and his brother Roger had spent four months secretly transferring most of Dreamwave's assets to a new company named Dream Engine, whose website domain was registered to Roger's name.^[24] In addition, it would turn out that Lee had made sure to transfer ownership of his formerly company-owned Porsche to himself before giving up Dreamwave,^[25] and had spent half a million Canadian dollars on a new luxury apartment even before the Dreamwave bankruptcy.^[26] The overall amount of Dreamwave's debt was far over a million dollars.^[27]

A former Dreamwave employee later suggested that Pat and Roger had known about the looming demise of Dreamwave a full year before declaring bankruptcy, but instead of coming clean to their employees, they named their parents secured creditors and then kept the company going for another year, because Canadian law required people to be named secured creditors for at least a year before bankruptcy in order to be given priority over other creditors (this is meant to prevent someone being given secured creditor status a week before bankruptcy and then getting away with all the company's money). Teddy and Anne Lee were granted $141,000 for alleged "furniture lease", even though they were financially supported by their sons for most of their adult lives.^[28]

In addition, Guido Guidi and Don Figueroa later confirmed that they were additionally charged by FedEx for having shipped artwork to Dreamwave prior to the company's closure.^[29]

Pat Lee himself gave several interviews following the closing of Dreamwave, presenting himself as a victim of circumstance while completely dodging the issue of unpaid creators and the existence of Dream Engine.^[30][31][32]

While working with Dream Engine, Pat Lee spent a significant amount of the company's funds on the campaign of his girlfriend Aimee Chan, who would eventually win the title of Miss Hong Kong in 2006. This ultimately resulted in Pat being asked by Dream Engine and his brother Roger to leave the company.^[33] In the fall of 2007, Aimee Chan changed her status on her alivenotdead social networking page^[34] to "single". Oops!

Following that, he was listed as the "director" of a Hong Kong-based company named DeepSky Pictures. The company apparently no longer exists, and it's unclear if it ever actually produced anything. Likewise, the companies Triple Eye Productions and Secret Lab Ltd. he had reportedly founded don't exactly have a high-profile output either, and it's difficult to find out whether they are even in business anymore.

In December 2010, Pat Lee finally agreed to give an interview to Rich Johnston, one of his most outspoken critics. While Johnston asked a lot of hard-hitting questions, often referring to personal conversations he had with people like Simon Furman and Alex Milne, Lee gave very half-hearted non-answers, claimed not to remember certain details or avoided answering questions entirely. Lee did announce he had started a "Creative Refund Movement" project to pay former Dreamwave artists.^[35] As of twelve years later, no artist has confirmed any kind of repayment, and one artist confirmed they received nothing within the first two years of its announcement.^[36]

In 2018, he (allegedly) designed rather scary-looking half-dissected "Looney Tunes Get Animated" vinyl figures of Bugs Bunny and Tweety for Soap Studio and Sideshow. While not necessarily morally questionable, these things are the stuff of nightmares.^[37] In 2021, he got involved in the totally not scammy field of NFTs.^[38] Official press releases continued to praise him as "one of the most famous artists in the North American comics industry" and a "celebrity artist."

Failure to give proper credit

During the Dreamwave days, several artists confirmed that Pat Lee had only been drawing the robot characters, leaving the backgrounds entirely to (credited) assistants such as Edwin Garcia. However, comic book journalist Rich Johnston reported rumors that Sigmund Torre had been ghosting for Pat, who was too busy with promotion and signing tours, as early as July 2002, when Generation 1 vol. 1 was still in production.^[3]

Another Dreamwave artist named Nick Kilislian, who is credited for doing the "breakdowns" for Dreamwave's Transformers/G.I. Joe: Divided Front issue 1, allegedly also ghosted for Pat on the X-Men/Fantastic Four limited series Dreamwave did for Marvel at the same time.^[39]

In 2007, it turned out that Lee's personal involvement in his girlfriend's beauty pageant campaign had resulted in him being unable to meet deadlines for issues of Top Cow's Cyberforce series. As a consequence, Pat had asked Alex Milne to draw those issues in his stead. After a few issues, what little credit was initially given to Milne was dropped entirely, with Pat submitting the artwork under his own name instead, paying Milne merely a fragment of the money Top Cow was paying him.^[40] In addition, Lee later asked Milne to draw artwork for DC's Superman/Batman #34 as well, again giving his underpaid ghost artist no credit.^[41] Eventually, Top Cow found out, resulting in Pat Lee not paying Milne at all for over 20 pages of artwork.^[42]

In late 2008, former Dreamwave editor Matt Moylan confirmed that the Silver Snail exclusive variant cover for Dreamwave's Generation One (ongoing) issue 1 that had been credited to Pat Lee had actually been drawn by a ghost artist as well.^[43] In early 2012, Moylan became more specific, now confirming that the cover had been drawn by Rob Ruffolo. In addition, he confirmed that an Arcee lithograph had been drawn by Rob Armstrong but credited to Pat Lee, the War Within vol. 2 issue 1 incentive cover had been drawn by Rob Ruffolo as well, and the Generation 1 vol. 3 issue 1 retailer incentive cover had been started by Pat Lee but finished by Rob Ruffolo because Lee was suffering from appendicitis at the time.^[44]

Lee's official artist bio has included the blatant lie that he "created the original North American series of Transformers comics" since at least 2018.^[37][38]

Attempts at cover-up

In March and April 2008, a newly registered Wikipedia user repeatedly tried to remove any reference to the controversies surrounding Pat Lee in his own article, instead replacing them with more PR-friendly resume details.^[45][46] (The critical content in the Wikipedia article was later purged for other reasons, but not reverted to the blatant self-advertising Pat's own version was.)

Notes

• Before the launch of Dreamwave's Transformers comic books, Pat expressed a certain level of ignorance with regard to the brand's history. For example, he claimed that, in retrospect, the Transformers cartoon was so amazing that it was only a matter of time before the toys were made.^[47] In the same interview, he also admitted liking Generation 1 Sideswipe, whom he considers a "wicked character", regretting that he "died" in the movie.^[47]

(Sideswipe did not appear in the 1986 film.)

• Fans discovered an old personal website Pat had set up prior to the big breakthrough with Dreamwave.^[48] In retrospect, many of the quotes and graphics featured on the site would prove to be either hilariously ironic or frighteningly prophetic, such as a promotional image depicting Pat, his brother Roger and then-Dreamwave exec Alvin Lee walking away from a nuclear explosion (see Image:Dreamwave.jpg); or a header graphic that features his name, "Patrick Lee", replaced by random Katakana characters (ミチヤメノテヒ フナナ), which read "Michiyamenotehi Funana". Soon, this would become his new nickname among fans, used exclusively in a mocking manner. The cause for this is almost certainly a character-replacement Katakana font (WordPerfect TrueType Japanese to be exact), as used by someone who has no damn clue how Katakana works, never mind an ability to read it. The correct katakana would be パトリック・リー (Patorikku Rī).
• After the launch of Dream Engine, Lee's resume at the company's website claimed that he was responsible for relaunching "X-Men, Batman and more", thereby implying that those franchises had long lingered in a near-dead state until Superstar Funana blessed them with his divine reanimating powers.^[49]
• Comic book gossip journalist Rich Johnston, who has done a fair share of coverage on the subject of Pat Lee, has made use of the fact that the URL Deepskypictures.com was a dead link (since the "company" Pat briefly served for as a "director" is now apparently defunct), but still linked to on several of Pat's social networking pages... by purchasing the URL and redirecting it to his coverage of Pat's past and involvement with Dynamite Entertainment at Bleeding Cool Comics for a while.^[50]
• One of the self-applied nicknames of Pat Lee is "the Transman", to indicate a deep love of the Transformers franchise. Apparently he was not aware that the term "trans man" is actually used by transgender people who identify as male.^[51]
• Pat Lee once set a hill on fire.^[48]
• All of the above is absolutely true. We're not kidding.
• This very article was cited by Valent Wang as the reason why he ultimately ended up starting his toy company, the Mecha Workshop, together with Don Figueroa, despite having initially approached Pat Lee about a partnership instead. Looking up his name led him to TFWiki, where he not only learned more about Lee's business practices, but also found out about Don, leading to a (hopefully) more promising partnership.^[52]

Memorable quotes by and about Pat Lee

“	It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener succeed through failures.	”
—Pat Lee must be the most successful man on the planet![32]

“	If he ever wants out of comics, Pat Lee's got a heck of a career as an auto mechanic.	”
—Wizard Magazine[53]

“	Hasbro sold Dreamwave the comic license a few years back, and now these two brothers are raking in over a million dollars a year, money being spent on fast cars and fancy toys ... But making comics isn't all fun and games; both brothers have shown a business acumen well beyond their twenty-something years.	”
—Local news report on Dreamwave and the brothers Lee during their heyday.[54]

“	I remember working with Pat Lee and how kind of disappointed I was to find how little of the art was actually him. He gave me an original art page of Armada, and there’s so little art on it!	”
—Simon Furman[55]

“	If Pat had been some faceless bureaucrat it maybe wouldn’t now seem such an acute betrayal, but he looked me square in the eye and said everything’s hunky-dory. That’s what still, even now, burns.	”
—Simon Furman[56]

“	Probably the richest guy I know.	”
—Don Figueroa [57]

“	A guy that really knows how to pitch himself.	”
—Guido Guidi[58]

“	Cars are expensive.	”
—Guido Guidi[59]

“	Can we get our money?	”
—Adam Patyk[60]

“	Some of the shapes and lines are a little misshapen. When you draw your lines, sketch them out in layout mode, and try to get as accurate as possible before making any final lines.	”
—Pat Lee, not practicing what he preaches.[61]

“	To anyone who wants to break into comics- learn to love drawing backgrounds and study technical work, never have an ego, and treat your fans with respect!	”
—Pat Lee, still not practicing what he preaches.[62]

“	Please don't believe anything that comes out of this man's mouth. I did, and look where it got me!	”
—Simon Furman in 2010 [63]

See also

• Dull surprise

External links

• Infrarred
• PatLeeArt at MySpace
• Pat Lee's alivenotdead profile blog site
• Pat Lee's deviantART page.
• Pat Lee's Youtube account
• Pat Lee's Twitter feed
• RESONANCE “Art of Vibrations”

References