Invoking a Collection

So, when you want to gain one of the benefits from invoking your collection (set a die face, cancel a minor twist, or establish story), you have to justify it with something that supposedly happened in that collection.  But here's what I don't get:

• You have to "include an editor's note."  How?  Is this just something the player says as part of their justification?
• Apparently you have to not only name the collection but know the specific issue.  How do you know what issues are part of the collection?  The pregenerated Freedom Five don't say; only Sentinels megafans would know all the comics that might be part of those collections.  (And even those don't totally make sense--Tachyon and AZ's first appearances were in Freedom Four Annual #1 and Freedom Five Annual #2, so they really ought to be part of the same collection, but aren't.)  And for continuing characters, you erase the back issues from your character sheet to make the collection, so how do you remember what issues were in that collection?
• Sure, the GM shouldn't require the players to have perfect recall about their previous game sessions, but it's likely that none of their previous games are applicable to the situation they want to use it in.  They shouldn't be able to say, "Oh, yeah, in the game we played last month, the villain was actually a Fleshchild all along, so now I know a little bit about how Biomancer operates," should they?  Normally, as GM, I'd totally veto that.

For this, I’d default to the GM tip on page 12 of the Guide…

“Be flexible in adjudicating how players apply these bonuses. Don’t require perfect recall about what happened in a previous adventure. The barest justification should work. Remember, comics get retconned all the time.”

As for the editors’ note, that’s one thing I’ll probably just ignore. If the players are playing heroes in a comic (which is much more fun in my mind than being part of the writing staff) they’re not going to be saying “back in issue #12”, they’ll be saying something like “the last time we fought a fleshchild”.

Basically, just go with whatever is most fun for your players.

Yeah that.

I usually just have them tell me a story on what happened. They usually say things that happened between session; some training they did, Some info the lifted from the last raid on the mob's place. I had one player state that in her 2nd issue (origins territory) she got into a fight with Fanatic (She has Demon fulled powers) and Fanatic been after her since then (To make her recurring, it is the player's favorite hero). I had a person say that in their solo book they continued working with the police to create a Swat type task force for powered villains  (gave gadgets they stole for E.Vile Corp.)