Studio
Three people, a board, and a plate for the splash
Netpilot Base started because reprint packs kept selling the pose on the cover and skipping the recap box. We wanted a place in Cambridgeshire where an Avengers origin issue could be read as a sequential object, then numbered, then closed.
Why origin issues, and why here
Wentworth is quiet enough to keep two chairs in a reading room without a queue at the door. Maidstone Road puts us within an easy run of Ely collectors who already knew Merrin from the pamphlet shop, and far enough from a high-street comic wall that we are not mistaken for a Wednesday restock.
The work is original sequential pages: ensemble assembly stories and joining origins in the Avengers tradition. Each finished issue is issued as a numbered NFT comic — the full interiors, not a cover file — with a paper proof of the opening splash printed from a plate in the studio. We are not a reprint warehouse and we are not a stall that sells variant covers without story.
How we work
Edition size follows the recap box. If a joining origin leans on three earlier issues, the edition stays small. If a first assembly can be handed to someone new to the run, we may go as high as fifty copies and then stop. We do not enlarge an edition after close.
Collectors sit with Tomais when their shelf is a mix of reprint packs and a few origin issues. Artists speak to Asha, not to a brief that asks for another artist’s line. Merrin closes drops and writes the provenance card: artist, letterer, colourist, page count, drop date, edition number.
People in the room
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Merrin Cole Drop editor Merrin sets edition size after the recap box is lettered and runs the allocation window. She came to Wentworth from a pamphlet shop in Ely, where she learned that collectors remember the last page longer than the cover.
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Asha Venn Sequential artist liaison Asha matches briefs to pencillers, inkers, colourists, and letterers. She will refuse a pastiche of a living artist’s line if that artist is not in the room.
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Tomais Reed Provenance clerk Tomais keeps the origin ledger and the sitting notes. If two issues share a recap they should not share, he is the one who catches it before a drop is announced.
