Event months in Marvel NFT comics are noisy. Mainline issues carry the fight. Side stories offer a nurse in a corridor, a reporter in a van, or a villain’s childhood in muted color. Some of those shorts hand the main plot a tool. Many do not.
The test we use at the desk is quotation. If a later mainline caption, object, or line of dialogue depends on the short, the short belongs on the story rail, usually as a prelude or a concurrent cutaway. If the short never returns, it is a mood piece. Mood pieces are allowed. They are not owed a place before the one-shot.
Collectors punish themselves by reading every short first, hoping to be thorough. Thoroughness in a crossover is about cause and effect, not about emptying a folder. A childhood flashback that never informs the treaty on page twenty of the event book can wait until you want a quieter night.
Conversely, a two-page van scene where a reporter pockets a photograph can be the only explanation for a blackmail beat in the flagship title. Skipping it because the cover looked like a pin-up is how plot holes get blamed on the writers.
Tie-in stacking exists to make this sorting less emotional. Prelude, concurrent, aftermath. Optional spotlight. Once a short has a tray, you can stop arguing with the drop calendar. Then read. The event month becomes a comic again instead of a chore list.