By the way, you're absolutely right about the book being worth a re-read. As I was handing the book to my wife to read, I casually flipped through and landed on one of the pages in which Barbara was home alone and she hears the terrifying scrawl of her own name echoing through the house. I flipped again and landed in the midst of the episode after her beat-down in which she's warning Sophia of the certain peril lurking around the corner in her house.

And suddenly, it all made sense. Powerfully crafted stuff there. I'm not usually a fan of books/movies that withhold key information until the end, only allowing someone to properly absorb the story on a second read-through. But in this case, it felt more like value added to me and so i was okay with it.

That's an interesting point about Tyler. Maybe she got left back and she's 12? I do know that I've been reading a lot about kids hitting puberty earlier these days because of hormones in the food, so maybe that's it. I tend to think it's just Niimura exaggerating how big she is to make her scarier, but I wonder if there's more to it ...

Taylor. The bully. They're all fifth graders. In an elementary school. Taylor is in fifth grade too (as we see her at the start of the next school year in the same school, Birch Elementary). So what's up with that? Do they really make ten-/eleven-year-olds that buxom these days? It's been awhile since I was in fifth grade, but none of the girls in our school matured that fast. So was Taylor a mistake? Or made more robust by Barbara's imagination?

Hm, one more thing. What do you make of the panels/pages that have the lightning hammer insignia stamped in? (The last sample page you post includes this motif.)

It's a long list. Egads...