The story “The Transaction” wasn’t in our initial plan. It was added to plug a temporal gap between two significant events in the storyline. The character of Balthazar was developed for that purpose. In fact, many of the stories from 1993 and 1994 were created to fill that gap. Editor Jordan D. White gives a good overview of the situation: “But it’s always important to keep those long-term plans as loose as possible—there is a really good chance that by the time we finish writing the first arc, we’re going to have a different idea of where we’re going than we started with—or at least a different idea of how to get there” (“Jordan D. White Reveals the Secrets of Editing,” Steve Morris, comicsbeat.com, October 21, 2012).