The New Wave was intended to be the flagship title of Eclipse's mooted shared universe, in a change to their previous works rarely crossing over outside Mark Evanier's DNAgents and its spin-offs.

The New Wave was a committee creation - the loose storyline was taken from an unfinished work written by Eclipse publisher Dean Mullaney some years before; editorial assistant Sean Deming had created the characters of Dot and Tachyon as separate comic pitches and the rest of the characters came out of a brainstorming session between Mullaney, Deming and editor-in-chief Cat Yronwode.

[7] During the events of the story Tachyon was seemingly destroyed; however, a short 'interlude' written by Steve Gerber planned to set up a potential solo series for the character.

[3] Professor James Holmes works for the Corporation, a large and rich company based on a space station in Earth orbit.

Tachyon flees to Earth to get help, but his first prospective allies - teenage superheroes Avalon and Impulse - are also captured by the Corporation, as is the stowaway Polestar.

However, with aid from the industrial spy Dot, who had sneaked on board the station, and Megabyte, a robotic guard who changes sides, the group are able to escape and decide to band together to end the Corporation's plans of world domination.