Newsarama: September was a big month for Transformers: Robots In Disguise, with both issue #9 and the 2012 Annual both coming out. Before we look to the future, can you get us up to speed on Transformers: Robots In Disguise, John?

John Barber: Well, I like to think every month is a big month for Transformers: Robots In Disguise... but issue 9 wrapped up a 2-parter by me and my regular collaborator, series artist Andrew Griffith. We pitted the Dinobots against their ally Ironhide. We got a big piece of Bumblebee's continuing attempts to make the government work back home, and the introduction of Superion, the combined form of the Aerialbots — which seems to have just spontaneously popped into being!

The Annual picks up right afterward — Bumblebee gets some help to look for the missing Ironhide — but Starscream's suspicious of Bee's motivations, thinking he might be using the missing Autobots to further his political goals... and they might not be very off-base. So the Annual picks up on the search for Ironhide, but we runs into something unexpected: Metrotitan, from September’s Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye Annual. Meanwhile, we flash back to ancient Cybertron, when Nova Prime — the first of the "modern" lineage of Primes — unites Cybertron in the so-called "Golden Age." The two stories and time periods bounce between each other.

Guido Guidi did all the art in the ancient Cybertron scenes in the style of the original first issue of Transformers, from 1984. It's a really cool style; Guido just nailed that look. It looks like your memories of that issue (if you're like me, and picked it up as it came out) — I mean, we're not poking fun at it or anything, but we're using that style to tell our story. And then the present day pages are by Brendan Cahill, who drew issue 7, with colors by Joana LaFuente — and looks amazing, too. Everybody is doing the best work of their career on this one!