These notes name the actual job: custom covers, allocations, variants, prints, or the Bourton table. They are not ratings widgets.
The first pencils put the katanas on the wrong hip for the gag I wanted. After the second round the caption box actually landed. I minted 25 and the A3 sheet is the piece guests pick up, not the token page.
I asked for #7 because it matches a box I already keep. They held it for ten days without pushing a second number on me. The provenance note named the 1991 splash I was thinking of, which saved an argument later.
The virgin treatment is quieter than I expected. I still prefer the newsstand version with the fake barcode. Worth having both files if you care about how the joke reads without trade dress.
Two hours went quickly. We rejected a movie-poster layout on the table because the mouth shape was too close to the licensed figure. I left with a costume-tell list I still use when I brief other artists.
The grease-pencil signature smudged on one corner in the post. They replaced the sheet. Colour on the mask is denser on paper than on my monitor, which I now treat as the real copy.
Turnaround slipped a week when the colourist was out. Nobody hid that. The finished cover is the one I wanted; I would still rather have had the original date, because my mint window was tight.
Priya arrived with three 1990s rack copies and a joke about a false month box. The first pencils staged the swords for a poster, which killed the caption. The second round put the mouth against the price panel. She minted twenty-five and took one A3. The remaining numbers went to friends who already owned the homage source.
Owen wanted a single number to sit beside a longbox already labelled seven. The allocation hold lasted ten days. The provenance note named a 1991 splash rather than a film still. He later skipped the print companion because the token was enough; that choice is ordinary here.