I see this column (and the similar work I’ve done with Savage Dragon, Young Liars, Echo and The Life and Times of Savior 28) as a kind of running commentary for the individual issues, not unlike what you get on a DVD. Occasionally, especially around big, landmark issues, the commentary might reach out into the deeper, more profound and important thematic elements of the series–but for the most part this is a visceral, immediate opportunity for me to ask the questions that occur to me about the issue and for the writers to clarify some points, tease some upcoming beats and elaborate on where an individual issue falls in the grand scheme of the title and the character’s history.Honestly, the “director’s commentary” nature of The Gold Exchange column doesn’t always allow or demand a lot of answers from the subject or for me to be too very clever. I used to be a lot more in-depth and analytical when doing commentaries for the trades, but DC recently stopped providing me comp copies and so I now tend to pick them up whenever I pick them up, rendering those interviews rather moot.A source of real frustration, if there is one, when dealing with DeMatteis isn’t what he won’t or can’t answer but what he doesn’t know. Because his scripts happen over Keith’s outlines, he’s often only an issue or two ahead of us (if that). It makes for a strange and exciting writing process for him, but it also makes it harder for the pair of us to look at the long-term ramifications of the individual issues and to assess where any 21-page tale might play into the grander scheme. Additionally, the Giffen/DeMatteis team have a lot less affection for subtle references, in-jokes and continuity porn than the Johns/Katz/Jurgens/Rapmund gang did. It makes the commentary-track nature of these things come off a little flat at times, I think, because we’re more used to Jurgens, who has a Grand Master Plan in place for Booster. Honestly I think the biggest issue at play is that DeMatteis doesn’t have a ton to say about Booster that isn’t there on the page…and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that.
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