Walking a collector through a four-issue proof

Last month a couple from Peterborough sat with four issues of their own household as the Fantastic Four. We do not present all forty-eight pages at once. Issue one stays on the table while they drink something; issues two and three wait on the sideboard; issue four — the Sunday argument — comes out only after they have argued with us about issue one.

The useful comments are always small. She wanted the baby’s bottle out of Johnny’s panel. He wanted Reed’s stretch to stop before the photograph of his late mother. Both notes belonged. We made them on a tracing overlay so the colour hold underneath stayed clean.

When they signed, Tom still waited for the mill. They left with a pencil photocopy, not a token. Two weeks later the sheets and the numbers travelled together. That order is now a studio superstition as much as a method, and we are keeping it.