A screenshot flattens trade dress. You miss the price, the board, the way the logo sits on a fold. In a briefing we put three actual covers down and stand back. If the gag needs a pinch zoom, it is not a cover gag.
Deadpool parodies often steal layouts from books that are not Deadpool at all: a romance kiss, a war comic pointing hand, a horror wash. Those sources need to be on the table so we do not accidentally rebuild a layout still under a living artist’s nose without changing it.
We write the source on a card: title, year, what we will keep, what we will break. That card becomes part of the mint sheet. Collectors who buy later should be able to follow the argument.
If you only have digital issues, print them cheaply and bring the paper. The quality can be poor. The scale cannot. We need to know whether the mouth still reads at 26 centimetres tall.
The studio visit is optional. The three-cover rule is not. A custom commission that starts from a single film still usually stalls at pencils, and we would rather tell you that in week one.