When IDW took over the Transformers license, they were approached by Holmes as well, loved his idea and he collaborated with Furman to further tie-in the story into the continuity of the IDW-published Transformers comics.
Inspired by Simon Furman's Transformers: The War Within for Dreamwave Productions, which created an origin for Optimus Prime, Holmes felt it would be fun to go back and further explore the beginnings of the Autobot-Decepticon war.