Dream Factory #1 review

This article originally appeared in Strangehaven issue issue #11, April 1999.

DREAM FACTORY #1 (Dream Factory) 48 pages + colour covers? A4

Dream Factory is an ambitious project, published by a group of creators from the Exeter area. It’s a comfortable mix of comic strips, short prose pieces and interviews with established British comic creators – these being Bryan Talbot (talking about his new Heart Of Empire series), Mike Kazybrid (who self-published a comic called Do-Do Man) and two pages featuring some guy who does a comic called Strangehaven.

The strips – as you would expect from an anthology – vary in competence, but all are of reasonably good quality. Some suffer from being short segments of continuing works and some lack a professional edge; most impressive being Henry Flint’s art on his strip Family Undead.

The problem with anthologies is that they tend to be uneven, so editors Tim Seelig and Steve Marsh have done a great job in balancing the assortment of material here. The notion that Dream Factory is “self-published” is arguable, but that concept given, it works well with the self-publishers interviewed; and the “British” thread running through the magazine helps it to hang together rather well. One fault is that it needed a little further proof reading prior to publication as it contains many typos.

At the cover price, it represents excellent value and it will be interesting to see how it develops.