John Barber and Alex Milne Interview Transcript from Alt Mode Special 5

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[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEoFaFMwT4w[/embedyt]

It’s Free Comic Book Day! IDW put out Unicron #0 today and we were privileged to do an interview with the creative team behind the Unicron mini-series, John Barber and Alex Milne!

If you’re a TransMissions Donatreon, you get an extended cut of the interview with an extra 30 minutes of content!

NOTE: This interview was conducted several weeks before the announcement that John Barber was named editor-in-chief of IDW Publishing.

The full transcript of the interview is below. The podcast version of the interview is here, or you can view the YouTube version embedded above.

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TransMissions (Charles): We’re privileged to welcome the creative team behind the final IDW G1 Transformers story: Unicron. Alex Milne is a veteran Transformers comics artist, best known for his artwork on the critically acclaimed Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye [MTMTE] series, and more recently, the Rom vs Transformers miniseries. Alex’s art has been a fan favorite for years and was a huge factor in MTMTE’s success.

John Barber has been a regular writer on Transformers comics since the Transformers: Robots in Disguise series, and continuing with the follow-on and currently running series Optimus Prime. He also co-wrote Rom vs Transformers, which was the first time John and Alex had worked together on a comic. John also served as the editor for all the Transformers books from 2012 to 2016 and is the reason the Transformers books now feel like they are in a coherent ongoing universe. Thank you both for joining us today to talk about the beginning of the end!

John Barber: Hey, thanks for having us! That wasn’t our first comic though. That wasn’t the first time we worked together.

TM (Charles): Oh, it wasn’t?

Alex Milne: Our first comic was a pack-in comic for some movie toys.

JB: That’s right. I can’t remember which one, because you did like two right?

AM: I did three. I did Jazz, Starscream, and Arcee.

JB: I forgot you did Jazz! That’s right! Okay, sorry. Yeah. I can’t remember what order they got done in.

TM (Charles): Oh well, you learn something new every day! But I hadn’t bought bought any of the movie toys, so I guess that’s why I missed that one.

TM (Jeremy): It’s always good to start off with Charles being corrected.

TM (Darryl): Yeah, I enjoy those times. (everyone laughs)

TM (Charles): Well, let’s get into the interview because we’re here to talk about Unicron and he’s a big guy. So it’s a big topic. So I want to start off, Alex, how did you approach redesigning the iconic planet-sized robot?

AM: Well, I didn’t redesign all of him. The planet mode had already been shown off in some promo art and IDW wanted me to keep it closer, similar to that. So that was what I had to go off of and I just came up with a robot mode based off of that planet mode. He’s covered in tons of different parts, like different chunks of planets that he’s eaten and digested. Some of it is turned to fuel. Some of it creates his outer shell, so I had to incorporate that into the robot design.

TM (Charles): Okay.

AM: Basically, I wanted to keep a lot of aspects similar to the G1 version of Unicron because I like that one so much, but I also like the Transformers Prime Unicron, and I wanted to figure out a way of making the large planet pincers not the shoulders. So I have them sticking – they’re like big pieces of armor that come up across the front of his chest and the mouth is still – like the maw is still in the center of the chest and I figured that he could use that to consume planets, even in robot mode. So that’s that’s why he looks like that.

TM (Charles): Yeah, that’s doubly menacing! I also saw the image that IDW’s released where you show Unicron in robot mode and he’s so huge that he can hold the Earth in the palm of his hand, so he’s he’s getting much bigger than I remember him in Transformers: The Movie.

AM: That’s just cuz you remember him wrong. (everyone laughs)

TM (Charles): As we proved at the beginning of this show, I get things wrong so –

AM: He’s had what, John, like 20 years to eat his Wheaties and grow up?

JB: Yeah, exactly. He’s eaten a few planets in between. The more planets he eats, the bigger he gets. So by the time we see him, he’s not just the size of Cybertron, he’s seven times the size of Cybertron or whatever. So yeah, he’s big. (laughs)

TM (Charles): And John, so now that we’re coming to the end game here, when they started the Hasbro Universe, and expanded the Transformers Universe – I guess this was two years ago or a year and a half ago, was Unicron always planned to be the end game at that time, at that point?

JB: Unicron is something we talked about forever. James [Roberts, writer of MTMTE] and I came really close to wanting to bring in Unicron at the end of Dark Cybertron, but we didn’t have a story to go along with it. We actually wrote a page that teased that Unicron existed, but neither of us were ready to get to that story or figure out where that was going to go. It would just be kind of a dangling plot thread for a long time, so we didn’t do that.

Yes, it’s always been something in our minds that’s come up a couple times, you know, wouldn’t we want to do it or what we wanted to do with it. But no, it wasn’t, that wasn’t the original plan. But from my point of view, way back in probably in the late 30s of Transformers or Robots in Disguise – I don’t remember, I think it was Transformers by then – of that comic, when I kind of came up with the idea of All Hail Optimus. It was kind of like, okay, well, if that happens, then the next story is going to be [about] Earth, our response to it, and that basically became Revolution when we decided to go with the Hasbro Universe.

But following off from that there was kind of, okay here’s what the next story is and then if that happens, and this happens and this happens, and I kind of realized, well that’s the end of what I want to do. That’s the end of my story. So I remember calling, I called James, I think I talked to Carlos first, you know, Carlos Guzman the editor of the comic at the time. I think I talked to him first. And I called James and I called Mairghread [Scott, writer of Transformers: Till All Are One] and eventually I called Michael Kelly at Hasbro and told them all the same thing.

When I told James, he was like, “I’ve got an end too.” I don’t think we really knew if they were going to sync up or anything. You know, because I was like, I’m not trying to get you to quit. I think this is – when I get to the end of this story, this is where we want to go. And this is when I want to go, I mean. Like go, as in, leave.

Sometime ago, many months ago now, I don’t remember exactly when, the idea came together with IDW to do Unicron and end everything all at once and those kind of all fit together. So that’s kind of where it came from.

TM (Charles): Okay, and I mentioned in the intro you guys had more recently worked together on Rom vs Transformers, and it feels like this Unicron collaboration is a natural follow-on, a spiritual successor to that miniseries. Would it be fair to say that?

JB: I think so, yeah. Alex? I don’t know what do you think?

AM: So far I’m having as much fun with it as I did with Rom vs Transformers. So yeah, there’s some interesting stuff that happens. Rom’s in it so – (laughs)

JB: That’s true!

TM (Jeremy): Are y’all working on it the same way? Cuz I know, Alex, you had a lot more input into the panel layout and stuff with Rom vs Transformers.

AM: Not this time. John’s writing [a] full script. There’s just so many characters and so much dialogue that needs to be shown to me that it’s better to write it in full script I think. [It] just keeps me from missing out on something that could be important.

JB: Yeah, that’s it. Like I always feel – I feel like this with anybody but I think, especially with Alex, and seeing what you did with Rom [vs] Transformers – I mean, I’m always open. I mean, it’s not like I would ever get mad if you did something that I wrote, you know, four panels and you did, you know, with the 11 that you were doing on Rom [vs] Transformers, or the other way around, you know what I mean? I trust your storytelling instincts and stuff, so I’m always – you know, hopefully that went without saying, but I’m always happy if you want to break it up differently.

When we launched into the Free Comic Book Day [comic], there’s an early draft of that script. It wasn’t really the same story that came in by the time Alex was on, but we had to start that so early. I think the first draft of it – I might not have known who was going to draw it even, or we might have gotten started on it and by the time we finished it, we knew. But, the second draft, I definitely knew it was you. And that was significantly different.

I mean, I don’t know, did you even see the first draft, Alex?

AM: When I got the script I was going away to a convention. So I printed it out, and it printed both scripts together so like everything that was redacted had a line through it, but I got to see what the original script was and what the new script was, and I was just like, “Aw, I could have drawn them?!”

JB: Yeah, maybe I did know you were gonna do it because that would make sense to have all those characters in there. Ah, so long ago now it seems. (laughs) Yeah, yeah, yeah. There’s a bunch of stuff changed. I think for the better. It’s definitely a better script. (laughs) I think it turned out really nice.

TM (Charles): That sounds like something some fans might like to buy at a convention or something.

JB: Yeah, there you go. I think some of that stuff makes its way into some of these other issues, though. So it’s not quite as exciting, some stuff just kind of got moved around. When characters made their introductions got changed around and who we were following. Because originally we weren’t – I guess it isn’t like a big secret, I think originally we were following some other characters who will show up later on, rather than now.

[We originally weren’t following] Optimus, Arcee, Bumblebee, and that group. And it just, it really didn’t make a lot of sense to start off that way and it made much more sense to have those characters kind of being in the forefront. So we’ll see some of that stuff actually happening in the Optimus Prime series and then some of it’ll filter back into Unicron as it goes on. Just the characters coming in a little bit later in the series.

TM (Charles): All right. And just a couple more questions before we get into some spoiler territory. I just wanted to ask – Unicron of course has a well known history going back to Transformers: The Movie. So I was curious – do you have a good reason for him to transform and is he going to get some minions to help him out?

JB: Alex, you field that one?

AM: Yes and yes. (everyone laughs)

TM (Charles): Fair enough. So we were lucky enough to convince IDW to let us read the issue a little bit early, so this is coming out on Free Comic Book Day. So everyone listening you should already have the comic. If you haven’t read it yet, I would suggest you go and read it now because we are going to spoil stuff from the first issue, or the zeroeth issue, of Unicron. So we already talked about Unicron getting a redesign, but we also have another character here, Bumblebee. We know he’s in a kind of a limbo state [and] he’s on track for coming back into the series, but here in Unicron #0, he’s already returned. So he’s back to form. He’s back in the universe with all his friends and he’s got a prominent role here. And so I wanted to ask, Is he a big part of this final series? Because Bumblebee has been kind of off the table for a long time, except for being Starscream’s Jiminy Cricket for a little while. But now we’ve got Bumblebee back. So is he going to be a big part of this last series?

JB: Maybe everybody’s hallucinating now. (everyone laughs) Maybe they all just think they’re seeing Bumblebee, but you know if everybody’s hallucinating, is there any difference between that and being alive? Maybe that’s all life is, is a collective decision that you exist. Yeah, he’s gonna play a big role. That’s definitely a case where you know full on – like the twist we alluded to earlier – that will have played out in Optimus Prime before you get that Free Comic Book Day thing. Barring something really horrible happening because we were very careful about that. Other than sending you the PDF. (laughs) Sorry.

TM (Charles): Well, it’s my own fault, I asked for this. (laughs)

JB: So the Bumblebee thing – the Free Comic Book Day issue is ahead of the story on that. I think by the time Free Comic Book Day hits we’ll be a little closer to that but, uh yeah, Bumblebee’s gonna play a big role. By the time Unicron comes out, everything will be synced back up and we’ll see where it is. If you’re reading all the Transformers books [and] you’re picking up Unicorn #0, it’s sort of a window into a couple months in the future, both in terms of our months and the Transformers’ months. So yeah, Bumblebee plays a big role, that’s the answer to your question. Yes.

TM (Jeremy): It made me smile to hear, or to see Bumblebee say “hokey smokes.”

JB: Ah! Yeah! Hey, see Alex! (laughs)

AM: I guess I just didn’t get it.

JB: You need to watch more Bullwinkle!

TM (Jeremy): Exactly!

AM: I can’t stand that cartoon.

JB: Really?

AM: I don’t mind it but it’s just never really caught on up here.

TM (Charles): Well, I appreciated Bumblebee’s line that he borrowed from Spike in the [Transformers] movie when of course without the expletive but – (laughs)

JB: Yeah, it’s sort of funny where there’s the one point where he couldn’t say something that he said in ostensibly a kids movie from 1985 (sic). (laughs)

TM: (Charles): Alex, it definitely looks like you put a lot of work into capturing the scale of Unicron coming and attacking Elonia, Rom’s homeworld and it looks like this comic took more effort than usual. I mean, we know you, you’re a stickler and have a lot of attention to detail. So how much pain did you go through to give us these beautiful images?

TM (Yoshi): It’s just a Tuesday, Charles. (everyone laughs)

AM: Yeah. I’ve been going through extensive psychotherapy. I had five nervous breakdowns. I’m not even sure if I’m actually here anymore. (everyone laughs) No, it was it was a challenge, but I was up to it. Like you said, getting the scale right was important to me. The hardest thing is trying to show off parts – like you need to have the Solstar Knights flying towards Unicron, but they’re so tiny. They’re only people, and like humanoid height, and Unicron is a planet, a bigger planet than Rom’s homeworld. So how do you do that? It’s all a matter of perspective – you put them in and they’ll still look small but they’re in the extreme foreground compared to Unicron, which is in the extreme background but since he’s so big, even [in] the extreme background he’s going to fill up the page, but the characters will look smaller. There’s a shot where you see Rom and Livia flying over the surface of Unicron and you get more a sense of how big he actually is because there’s giant chunks of digested planet on him that they’re flying over.

TM (Charles): Yeah, it gave me the feeling of like, the trench run on the Death Star. In terms of the the scale of the characters to the surface of the planet.

JB: Yeah, I mean, I do feel like an absolute jerk writing in a script something like – I mean that’d be like writing, “Superman flies over Planet Earth,” you know, like deal with that. What does that mean? That scale is horrific! But you did an amazing job on it, Alex.

AM: I wouldn’t mind Superman flying over planet earth because Superman is easy – well he’s not easy to draw, getting him to look right is a pain in the butt. He’s got like such a defined chin and hairstyle. But he’s not like boxes and gears and… It’s not like Optimus Prime and everything so… [But] no, it’s fun. It’s fun. I like more what we uncovered in the attack later on. There’s an interesting page coming up.

TM (Charles): Oh yeah, you’re referring to the Titan buried underground?

AM: Yeah. That was the most fun I had, was that page.

TM (Charles): Cool, drawing that face embedded in the rock there.

JB: Yeah, I can’t believe you made sense of the nonsense I wrote in that page and not only did that, but made it into like such a great page that really shows the scale. Because that is another one. The scale on that is so bizarre and weird and you got a giant planet attacking another planet, [and] buried underground is a city that’s a person, and coming towards the city are 20-foot-tall people with a six-foot-tall person, or what are they 30-feet-tall? I mean, that’s crazy! And it looks so beautiful.

TM (Jeremy): And then one of them picks up a rock.

JB: (laughs) That’s right! There’s a rock on that page! Sorry, Alex.

AM: Nah, that’s not a big deal to me.

TM (Yoshi): You guys have worked together for a while now, so you’ve probably got a good rhythm between each other. But how did you originally figure out like, John, how much detail to put in the description of a page so as to make sure Alex had enough information to go off or you weren’t giving him too much to drive him insane? Like at some point there, you have to release creative control and let him have fun, right?

JB: Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I’ve known Alex for many years you know, like, I was editing MTMTE for a very long time. So I’d talk to Alex, you know, every once in a while. I mean, I talk to him on email all the time, but [also] on the phone every once in a while, so I kind of had a feeling for where you would really maybe want to stretch out, you know? I mean, I’d seen Alex coming in with ideas and I, you know, I remember talking to Chris[tos] Gage who co-wrote Transformers Rom, or Rom [vs] Transformers, whatever. I don’t know the names of any of these comics, (laughs) but I remember telling him we should really give Alex some room, and like early on, there’s a page where we get to a space station. And I think in the script, it said something like, there’s like maybe 50 people on board and then Alex sent this email back, and he was like, “That doesn’t make any sense, a station that size would have to have at least 150 people because you’d be on eight hour shifts, so you’d have to have somebody on duty at all times.” And it’s like, oh yeah, okay yeah, you’re absolutely right and Alex is thinking this stuff through so well and like, the planet that Rom [vs] Transformers took place on was – Alex sent this email with these ideas for the ecology of it. It was like, oh, yeah, that’s fantastic. So the more room we could give him, the better.

Rom [vs] Transformers, especially, was really spare where it was just kind of like here’s a – I mean I was trying to be spare – you’re on a mining planet somewhere. And, go for it, make it really cool you know? And some artists would not like that. You know what I mean? There’s some people that would just like – [say] “Why aren’t you doing your job?” I was hoping, and kind of banking on Alex liking that because I think – well he’s here so you can speak to that, but yeah, I think he likes designing that stuff. I very rarely ever call shots you know like, what camera angle or what positioning of the camera there is because I definitely think that’s, you know, part of the collaboration, part of the thing the artist does. Because you can make up all the shots in your head on the script but whether or not it actually works in a drawn page, that’s a different story. You know what I mean? And I don’t like locking people into some sort of thing. Sometimes I’ll call a shot just if I don’t, if I think I’m sounding like I’m describing something impossible, but I can think of a way to do it, but I don’t really mind if that’s the way it gets done. So yeah, the more space I can give Alex, the better as far as I’m concerned, I don’t know, what do you think Alex?

AM: Yeah, well with Rom vs. Transformers, that was like I was a kid in a candy store. (laughs) That was like Christmas to me. I’ve been working with James Roberts for so long and he’s very rigid in how he outlines and scripts and how he wants things to [be done] and we’ve had a few arguments about how doors work – that is the real reason why John left as an editor. I’m just letting everybody know now. He got sick of our emails about how doors work on spaceships. (everyone laughs)

JB: There were more arguments about how doors work in that comic than the zero times that’s happened anywhere else in my comic book career. (laughs)

AM: What can I say, it was a special book. (laughs) So like when I got [to work on] Rom and Transformers, that just gave me the chance to be like, “Hey, let’s do a ton of crazy stuff,” and John and Christos were up for it. So that was amazing and like with Unicron right now, like, John, you give me a little bit more detailed script, you give me the dialogue. So now I know where I should be placing people and to give them where I should give panels, a little bit more room. So, it’s all real fun. Heck, you give me space battles. How could I not love that? (John laughs)

TM (Yoshi): So is it safe to say that really, John focuses on the dialogue and Alex you just focus on making sure everything looks perfect? It almost sounds like, Alex, you’ve got creative control of the look and John is putting his attention where it should be, which is just on the back and forth between the characters.

AM: I guess you could say that. I also read over the script very carefully and I’ll be thinking about how John’s written it, how the dialogue’s coming out, and I have to add that kind of personality to it if I think a character’s giving this line some sass I have to show that off in the art.

TM (Yoshi): Gotcha. Very cool.

JB: Yeah, you’re so good at acting with the characters too, and it’s kind of another thing I really like. I mean I’m really lucky to get to work on Transformers with you and Andrew [Griffith] and Kei [Zama] on Optimus Prime and then Sarah PD [Pitre-Durocher] on Optimus Prime on some of the issues and like, all of you are really good at understanding the characters and understanding how they emote, you know? You guys are just really good at making that come through. So that’s really cool. You’re good, you’re all good.

AM: I try. (John laughs) But when you’ve got like fun characters to play with, it’s pretty easy. Like with Wheeljack in the Free Comic Book Day issue.

JB: Aww, poor Wheeljack.

TM (Charles): Yeah, speaking of Wheeljack, so you get to kill Wheeljack a second time. (laughs) So was this just a nod for us RID [Transformers: Robots in Disguise] readers who remember the first time?

JB: I don’t know, you know, we’re coming into the end and stakes are high and he’s one of my favorite characters. The first time that was definitely a situation, kinda like, you know, Bumblebee, where we kind of knew where he was going. Or a certain other character that showed up in Optimus Prime recently. (laughs) I knew the fake out in the death [the first time Wheeljack died] and you know now there’s not a lot of time for fake outs. So it certainly isn’t one.

Charles: Yeah.

JB: I don’t like deaths for the sake of deaths, but it was just kind of like – it gives him, I think, a really heroic moment, but like a kind of an understated heroic moment, in a way, you know? So it’s still tragic. It’s still sad, I think. It was very sad for me, anyway. I don’t know, sort of like with Sideswipe being in the issue, you know. I feel like sometimes people are like, “Oh you hate those characters!” like, no, I mean, those are the ones I love! That’s why it hurts you know?

AM: [With] Wheeljack, you gave them the Spock death. (everyone laughs)

JB: Yeah, yeah.

TM (Charles): So, John you you’re known as, and I mentioned it in the intro, that you’re kind of the continuity fixer. Since you were editing the book for about four years and writing on Robots In Disguise you’ve tied in a bunch of, I would say a lot of plot points that were dropped by other authors for various reasons, but you managed to kind of tie them all together, and can we expect more connections to the early days of the IDW Transformers comics in these last six issues?

JB: Yeah, there’ll be a little bit. A lot of that’s just the sort of stuff that I’d read and it would kind of inspire me or make me think there’s maybe an interesting story that you can tell. There’s stuff that very directly calls back to at least RID . Hopefully you don’t need to know that if you’re just coming in on Unicron, you can still kind of enjoy this as a big giant story the way you can come in with Crisis on Infinite Earths or something in the mid 80s and still enjoy that as a story, even if you didn’t read the DC Universe before then. But some stuff’s definitely gonna come up.

I kind of think more of it’s probably going to be from the stuff that had already played a big role in RID Transformers and Optimus Prime, just because that’s the stuff that’s really still in the air. But, like I was saying, with regards to Arcee, some of it you kind of have to think back and think, well, this is going to be – one of the cool things about this is that you’re going to be able to actually get all of these stories, you can set them on your bookshelf, they’ll probably all be in those cool oversized hardcovers and you can sit down and read the first one and go all the way to the last one and get a get a whole story.

So there’s maybe some things I’m trying to think of that would make that a more coherent reading experience, you wouldn’t be left with some something hopefully making you super angry, just because of its being left out or something or forgotten about. But the reality of the situation is there’s only so many pages and it’s definitely the stuff that’s been at the foreground of the storytelling for the last few years. That’s going to be the stuff that gets the most screen time, the most page time.

TM (Charles): Yeah. And speaking of RID plot points, particularly Dark Cybertron, did you always have a – I mean I know it’s an interesting coincidence: There’s 13 ores, 13 colony worlds, 13 Primes. Did you always have in the back of your head that you were going to have all those things intersect and kind of feed off of each other?

JB: Yeah, as they kind of added together. It wasn’t like all at once, you know? Ore-13, obviously, was the thing that Simon [Furman, longtime Transformers comics writer who wrote the beginning series of the IDW Transformers comics Universe] came up with. And I saw that and I was like, “Well, thirteen. There’s 13 Primes! You know, that’s interesting.” And maybe there’s 13, maybe it isn’t just a kind of random number, but maybe there’s 13 ores that are important. You know, I don’t want to make this sound like we sat down in 2007 and figured out exactly how page 17 of Unicron would happen in 2018. But as the pieces kept adding to it, we’re like, “Okay, if we’re going to do these 13 colonies too, that all seems to fit together,” and there’s very probably, there’s every chance that something would happen somewhere and make that not work, you know? Like, that might have been going on in my head but that wasn’t necessarily the way reality was going to come together, but it kind of did. So yeah, the pieces just kind of all added up to each other. Somewhere in between a grand plan and just kind of improvising the whole way, but it all fit together anyway. (laughs)

That’s kind of one of the tricks I guess? I mean, this is something that I think about a lot and I don’t mean to just ramble but like when Lost came out and Battlestar Galactica was going on at the same time, and both of them were saying, “Okay, we’ve got a plan and we know where we’re going,” and both of them by the time they got to it, like, clearly didn’t. But you had all these other shows that would come out and they’d be like, “Okay, we really do have a plan,” and they’ve got like a six season plan that’s super tight. It gets you exactly where you’re going to go in season six except they get cancelled, you know, four episodes in. And it’s that balance between the two. Where Lost and Battlestar are shows I like and admire tremendously. And part of that is they were always compelling week to week, with some exceptions. You know what I mean? Like there’s a season of Lost that everybody’s like, “Oh no, that season didn’t work.” That was when they clearly didn’t know where they were going. But, that idea of being able to keep the storytelling going week to week is really admirable.

But there’s a warning in there too, of like, Lost encouraging people to ask questions that the show itself was probably never interested in at all, you know? Like what were those numbers? What did they mean? Well, the fact is they were references to the Illuminatus Trilogy and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and I mean, you can go through the numbers and figure out what they’re referring to. But it’s got nothing to do with the plot of Lost. It’s just the numbers that geeks like us like. But there’s no way to not have that be like, right in your head when you’re watching the show. Like, when are we going to get answers to what all this stuff means? And same thing with Battlestar. You kind of got to the end and what was Starbuck all about? That was mystery! Come on, you know, I invested too much time in worrying about that to just not have an answer right?

But at the same time, that got to the end of the series, where V or the 4400 or whatever never did. So I don’t know. Yeah, that’s a thing I worry about a lot. It’s a thing I think about a lot is how much of it is master plan versus how much of it is keeping things interesting issue to issue, story to story. And God, really hoping not to screw up the ending because we’re working really hard on it. And there’s a lot of things you plan for a really long time. There’ll be scenes that I’ve had in my head since, I don’t know, years now that hopefully will play out okay. (laughs) There’s the honest answer – I don’t know! That’s the real John’s head. (everyone laughs)

TM (Charles): So Stardrive was a was a really breakout character from Rom vs Transformers. We have seen her come back into the series in Optimus Prime, so, in particular, I would hope that that Alex maybe gets a chance to draw Stardrive one last time in this series? Any chance of that?

JB: Yeah, definitely, yeah. I don’t think that’s too much of a spoiler. Yeah, of course. I mean if you go back to the beginning of the interview, she was one of the characters that was in the first draft of the script and it obviously made a lot of sense because she’s Cybertronian and Elonian. It just sort of narratively didn’t make sense to get her there yet, so I think the next time we see here will be in Optimus Prime, but she will – you’re not the only person on this call who’s asked that a lot and is pretty excited about it. (everyone laughs) Definitely yes, absolutely.

TM (Charles): Awesome. Awesome.

JB: Yes, I think, Alex would – you’d kill me right, if she didn’t?

AM: I think you’ve gotten sick of my emails about, “When’s Stardrive coming back? I want to draw Stardrive!” (everyone laughs)

JB: That character, so much, that was all Alex. Such a great, you know, the designs, the name. She’s a character I really love and, as we’ve sort of seen, some some stuff’s happened in the last couple hundred years with her. She’s fallen in with a rough crowd, huh? But yeah, we’ll, see her.

TM (Darryl): Will her subplot from the end of Rom vs Transformers be resolved? Is there time to resolve it?

JB: It’ll play a role. I was talking to somebody this weekend, and we were talking about, like, something resolving, and I was like, “I guess the real question is does anything ever resolve? Like are human beings capable of resolving anything?” And it was like whoa that might be too big of a question to ask you, because that might be the essential question about human existence. So does it resolve? I don’t know, does anything? Like, do we resolve ourselves? Do we, do people change? I don’t know.

TM (Charles): I thought we were just talking about Transformers not discussing, like, existential philosophy! (everyone laughs)

TM (Jeremy) It’s one and the same.

TM (Yoshi): Don’t Battlestar this ending!

JB: (laughs) The whole of my run on all the Transformers books has been about this idea of can you break the cycle? Is Cybertron – you’re a hero until you live too long and then you become the villain, you know? Like, that’s been there, that’s what happened with Nova [Prime], and that seems to be what happened with the 13 Primes before then.

And is that happening with Optimus? And, I don’t know, is that breakable? So I don’t know, it’s tough for – I mean, I spent I’ve spent a lot of years and a lot of time on these guys and it’s hard for it not to be big existential questions for me at this point. (laughs)

So, yes, it’ll play a role. And I don’t know. I don’t know is the answer to the other question. (laughs)

TM (Charles): Well, bringing things a little bit down to Earth – Action Man. Is he gonna play a role in the final series or will we get a one one last ride with Action Man?

JB: (laughs) I think the idea is there’s going to be some extra short stories in Unicron and I think we’ll at least get to check in with him. Either in the main story and/or in a short backup story. So yeah, pretty much. I like the guy.

AM: You could make it in the main story and then I get to draw it. (laughs)

TM (Jeremy): Have him swoop in and save the day.

JB: That’s it. That’s it. That’s yeah oh man! What, did they send you the script for issue ? Oh, no! (everyone laughs) “Yeah, you did okay Optimus. I got this one.” (everyone laughs)

TM (Jeremy): Do the Bob Newhart ending, and he wakes up and the entire Transformers Hasbro-verse thing was all in his dreams.

JB: (laughs)

TM (Charles): So, Chris Ryall has left IDW, but I was curious. Did you tell Chris that you destroyed the Solstar Order?

JB: That’s why he left!

TM (Charles): (laughs) He’s definitely a, you know, a big Rom fan there. So I’m sure he’s happy that Rom’s featured in Unicron, but maybe not so happy that his planet has been destroyed.

JB: Yeah, Chris was still there for this issue. In all seriousness, he and David Hedgecock also played a big role in kind of working through what the Unicron story was going to be. So yeah, I got Chris’s notes on the first issue, come on, yeah. (laughs) He was sad to see Elonia go. I think Elonia got more screen time in Rom [vs] Transformers than it ever did in Rom, but you know, nevertheless. (laughs)

TM (Charles): Well, they did have that annual that was all set on Elonia.

JB: That I know, that’s true. You’re right, you’re right.

TM (Charles): (laughs) So I know, John, you collaborated with with Tom Scioli on that Transformers vs GI Joe #0 Free Comic Book Day [in 2014]. I was curious if Alex, this was the first Free Comic Book Day comic that you’ve gotten to do?

AM: It is.

TM (Charles): Cool. So I think this is probably a Transformers comic that is going to get much wider circulation than normal since everyone’s going to be picking it up and I think that’s pretty cool.

AM: Hopefully everybody’s going to be picking it up. Hopefully it’ll be one of the first books that disappears off the free rack. (laughs)

TM (Charles): So Alex, what was it like working with with Sebastian Cheng and his colors on the book? I know you and Josh Perez have been longtime collaborators, so I was just curious how it was with a different colorist on this one.

AM: It’s been great. There’s definitely a learning curve for both of us. I have to go over his work a little bit more because he’s not used to working with my lines so he doesn’t – I’m very – I pack in the detail, so there’ll be times I’ll be like, “That should be that, that should be that,” like, just little background elements, just like, can we change that? But he’s been great. I feel bad anytime I would have to give him an edit, because I’m just like, “I feel like I’m giving too much here!” but he’s been a good sport and he was one of the people that I wanted to work with. Ever since I saw his work on Revolutions (sic). So I wanted to get the opportunity to work with him. So thankfully the bosses were like, “Okay, sure, we’ll pair you two up.”

TM (Charles): Yeah, and the results are fantastic. The art really pops, the colors really pop too. So it’s really cool. Alright, I think we’re coming to the end here and I have to ask this question. I know you guys probably can’t answer but are you privy to or involved with what’s next for IDW Transformers comics?

JB: Umm…

TM (Yoshi): It’s a yes or no [question].

JB: Yeah, yeah. Well, sort of. I’m working on the Bumblebee limited series with Andrew Griffith and Priscilla Tramontano. And stuff like that will continue with that set in the, you know, it’s a prequel but by about 20 years, a prequel to the upcoming Bumblebee Movie. So, like, I might be aware of something along those lines, that perhaps I might be involved in.

TM (Charles): (laughs) Okay…

JB: You know what I mean? Like, when people ask that, like, I feel like I’ve been cagey online answering stuff because I don’t want to be unclear, assuming there’s a big reboot book. I don’t know. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know the exact plans. I know a little bit, just because of coordinating times and schedules and stuff for this book. But I don’t know if there’s any sort of, you know, firm date on when there will be [a new Transformers series]. I don’t know if there’s going to be some downtime. There will be – David Marriott said at WonderCon, there’ll be Transformers books every month. But they won’t necessarily be, it won’t necessarily be the end of this, like Unicron six [issues] and then straight into a new Transformers Universe unique to the comics. It might be some stuff that’s involved in, you know, other iterations of Transformers. So the answer to the question that’s probably the heart of that question is no, I’m not. But there’ll be other stuff too. I actually don’t know the answer for Alex.

AM: Yeah, it’s a no. (John laughs)

TM (Charles): Aww, well, I hope that changes at some point in the future because both of you have contributed a lot to Transformers comics and we’d like to see you come back in some form on future stories or future comics.

JB: Yeah, well I love Transformers. It’s been very nice to work on the Transformers for as long as I have and it’s been an honor and it’s been great to get to meet so many people that these comics have meant so much to. And they mean a lot to me too, obviously. Or I hope obviously. They do, if it’s not obvious. But it’s been great to meet so many people and see how it’s affected people.

TM (Charles): Yeah. So, thank you to Alex Milne and John Barber for joining us and talking to us about Unicron and definitely pickup Unicron #0 at Free Comic Book Day and look for Unicron in July, I believe that’s coming? And that’ll be a 6 issue series that will put an end to the Transformers Universe. Thank you guys for joining us and good luck with all your future projects and we’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for all the things you guys are doing.

AM: Thanks for having us.

JB: Yeah, thanks a lot!

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