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I pretty much had to change the caption colors so we know it’s Kerri talking. Seemed like red would be a good choice. She likes red.

The first panel on this page, and really the whole falling down the well thing stem from something that happened when I was a kid. In 1987 Jessica McClure fell down a well in Midland Texas, where my uncle was (and still is) the county Sheriff. As you can imagine we were even more riveted to the TV set for news of her condition than the rest of the free world because of the personal connection to the town my family has, and we were all deeply relieved when she came out of the well alive. The incident is something I’ll never forget for a number of reasons, but most of all because just the thought of falling down a well like that and being trapped just freaks me out. So when I was looking for a catalyst for Kerri and Tonya to gain their powers it seemed really cool to use a modified version of Jessica’s ordeal. I’d always known that Kerri got her powers due to the water in and around Springview. It was kind of a joke really, playing on the whole “there’s something in the water” saying. There’s more to it than that, which we’ll get into later on, but hitting on the well thing really tied things together nicely.

The baseball thing came about because I needed some way for Kerri to discover her powers without totally compromising her identity. Sure, she could have been hit by a car or something, but this was more fun, and I still laugh when I think about what the poor pitcher must have thought when Kerri cranked that ball out of the state!

Careful observers will note that the posters on the bedroom wall are authentic album covers. Lisa wanted to know what I thought she should use, so Harold and I gave her some of our favorite album covers. Kerri strikes me as a Led Zepplin kind of girl, and she LOVES her some John Lennon. She likes some Bjork, but the newer stuff is a little out there.