I don't like Pat Lee's art style, but I don't think that he cannot 'draw' in that sense of the word. I think 'style' is part of drawing. Every artist has their own styles and that is what separates one from another- in other words, each artist draws in his or her own unique way.

I'd think that disembodied heads, lack of perspective and the other reasons cited by Gok, are part of Pat Lee's repartoire, it is his drawing style. As his per-cubist art would attest, Picasso certainly knew the basics of perspective and how to paint but yet in his cubist paintings he chose to paint with no perspective at all and in a manner that flies in the face of Renaissance sensibilities- but that is his style (or his chosen style). Pat Lee may equally know how to draw but for reasons of his own, chose to draw in the style we see in the Dreamwave comics.

So I'd say, I don't like his art style (= drawing and style of drawing). However, that does not mean that there's no merit to it. I may see little of value, but someone else may see the world of it; for the same reasons that that I think Mondrian's (or Pollock's) pieces are so ridiculously simple that a child could paint them, but still the greater collective of people think the world of them (as evidenced by people willing to pay millions to own a piece of their art).

Despite my own reservations, Pat Lee does appear to have and still have a lot of appeal to the fandom (or maybe to Hasbro, I don't know). For one, his art is reproduced and used on various forms of TF marketing, his art is used in the TF Monopoly game, used in (albeit) pirated TF dvds and vcds and (I friggin' hate this) used as the basis for TF statues, busts, exclusives and even Revoltech.

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STL, I would attribute (or would like to attribute) that fact that his TFs issues sold in the region of 60K (or however large amount) was due to there being no regular TF comics since the 90s. Hungry fans had waited nearly a decade for more TF comics thirst to be sate (I know I was), and along comes DW and Pat Lee. Surely that is reason enough for them to snap up the first official TF comics to come along, buying multiple covers along the way, just so they don't miss out. I don't think the initial DW run did well because of the Pat Lee art, I think they did well because they were TF comics and fans at that time were dying for TF comics- any TF comic.

Sadly, because of their wide circulation, Pat Lee styled TFs may also be the most widely familiar thing around.