Paranatural

Paranatural

I'm trying really hard to be excited for this comic anymore, but the pacing is so awful. I should stop reading for a while and coming back after several of updates.

I miss hitball

Not one, but three reaction images

...

...

oh boy i bet he's gonna say something wacky while making a wacky face, thus completely ruining the tension

Max is best boy.

Suzy a shit

Why are they enlarged and blurry.

i find it really hard to give a fuck about this whole supblot. i like this student council guy's design though.

>genuinely funny and endearing 3rd panel

Can we please just stick with this, Zach? Just fun supernatural stories with kids being goobers?

I actually really liked this joke this week

zach is typically not too bad with the humor, honestly. i've still laughed at a lot of the newer stuff. it's moreso the art, pacing, and general storywriting that he falls flat on

Oh come on, any competent person would have made this a 2 page update. There's a difference between a cliffhanger and having it feel like a page is missing. Fuck.

Woah there, Zack already has trouble getting two pages a week and skips updates on the regular, so a two-page update ? Too much.

There's no reason this and the last update needed to be separate pages.

>Last panel includes half of the conversation

I wonder what kind of WACKY TWIST we'll see Tuesday.

This was a good page.

Today I dreamed Zack made his comic private, and that you had to pay $2 por every new page.

I forgot that the bus jumping was such a big deal.

When it happened I thought it was just a funny gag.

Not three, but ONE backgrounds.

This would be a really good half of a page for a single update.

>m-muh pacing
Explain, goobers

I wish zack would pull more bullshit shenanigans, like he did with the non-binary bs

dissing paranatural's dragging plot progression is stale now, I need new hate material.
goddamn hack is so mediocre he fails to inspire any emotions whatsoever, I cant even hate this page. truly, being mediocre is so much worse than being absolutely and utterly retarded at storytelling. at least the latter is funny to laugh at how bad it is, to the point where it might be considered ironically bad. with mediocrity there's nothing, no emotions, no hopes, no dreams.

I think people are getting too into hating this comic. I guarantee most people here put up with worse shit from webcomics they still keep track of, but somehow this one has gotten everyone's ire for simply not being as good as it could be.

>but somehow this one has gotten everyone's ire for simply not being as good as it could be.
if someone ruined the thing you loved, wouldn't you hate them for it? Pnat used to be the best thing since the invention of sliced bread and capitalism, but then zack got eaten by the blob of mediocrity, and it really shows in the comic. a mediocre comic that is mediocre all the way through just means people won't care about it at all, but you just stir up resentment if you destroy something that people really like, even if you were the one who brought it into this world.

so yeah, I'll very eagerly get into hating the comic. i've accepted that pnat has failed and will never be the gem I wanted it to be, so I might as well express my disappointment through hateful mockery. just give me some new shit to mock at least ffs

>200 page chapter where most pages are irrelevant

He pads pages when he doesn't need to and it doesn't help the jokes.

Yeah that was pretty good.

First page in a long time that didn't stick out like a pale piece of shit in the catalog

>Have a character announce another character is gay like no one in real life does
>Put the already bloated story to a halt to give a lesson on made up gender politics
>Cliffhanger that probably won't bee resolved until next Friday

...

I have to say, at least this page is not useless. I think Zack is at least thinking in closing all the plot points.

This is the most JoJo we've ever been
I like it

>Jojo invented sideways glances

man you're really fucking worked up about this, aren't you?
Just like, enjoy the fiction, bro
All dramatic moments are now JoJo, don't you understand that user?

>gay
non-binary isn't gay, it's "I'm a rebellious teenager and I don't feel like playing by these made up pointless rules that have never really mattered anyway"

I find this is hard to do with a lot of webcomics that end up getting discussion threads on Sup Forums.

3rd panel and joke make this page a lot better then the last few pages we have been getting.

I think user is talking about this

That was a sick burn because literally nobody else can hear her

>The copy and paste for 5 and 7.

I mean, is it acceptable because it's part of a joke I guess?

Yeah, usually he redraws those, so seeing the actual copy/paste is kind of jarring.

webcomics are srs bsns you cuck. i'll have as many overly strong opinions about it as I like grrr

I love you user but maybe you should consider letting the love enter your heart like a dolphin riding a fist of rainbows

An important distinction to make, to be sure, but I still don't think people announce it like that.

maybe ur rite :(((((

being gay is one thing, but being non-binary because you think penises and vaginas are made-up pointless rules that never really mattered is uh

pretty fucking gay

The backgrounds are different, and there are some pixel-level differences that suggest he resized it after copypasting.

It's not about penis and vagina it's like
skirts
or something
it's dumb

>Most people here put up with worse shit from webcomics they still keep track of
Well, that makes me not 'most people' then I guess
I only came in this thread to see people complaining about another cliffhanger page in a very slow webcomic. Zack has forgotten that Paranatural isn't in a book people can read in one go yet, and has not remembered that for a very long time.

The rules of the English language, which govern the pronoun thing, are definitely pointless and have never mattered. Biology is inescapable, but using the correct words for things doesn't matter in the slightest.

Of course this argument falls apart a bit if the first thing you do after freeing yourself from the shackles of language is to make up some new pointless rules and insist that everyone follow them.

We're all forcing our selves to love the current state

The bus jump thing happened so long ago I keep thinking to myself "why are people in this still talking about it?"

agreed. maybe it wouldn't seem to be such an omnipresent issue if you read the comic all at once, but probably nto

Prime example of the terrible pacing this comic/Zack can't seem to shake.

It's over half the comic ago.
To ANYONE that feels really long for a plot thread like this.

I think the reason that part annoys me is that Zarei had barely been an established character by then. We expect Isabel/Isaac/Ed/Max/Spender/etcetcetc to act goofy once in a while, they're part of "the gang." But to have a character like Zarei to spend several pages getting absurdly flustered is a little weird. It's like if Forge, Doorman, or Agent Walker did the same thing.

(Although I do wonder if Zarei normally isn't like this and Agent Day may have had something to do with it. She does have infatuation related powers after all, and ulterior motives for using them in an underhanded way.)

If Zack wanted to present the idea that Agent Day has love powers, the Zarei "admitting to being gay" thing was a very poor way of demonstrating that. He could have done it as subterfuge/coincidence, but fuck if that doesn't set the pacing even further back.

>It's like if Forge, Doorman, or Agent Walker did the same thing
I can easily see that happening. This isn't the kind of comic where people are allowed untouched dignity. It could've been handled better, like not just dropped in the middle of another story. And written better. But I'm not opposed to these things in principle.

Her whole thing with her other spirit tools and living in her parents' basement sort of took care of that too before we got into her spagetti spilling with day.

Rereading that part, actually, it wasn't THAT bad. Funny how memory plays around like that. Still, I think it was a little too heavy handed during her lunch with Day. I just feel like Zach has to learn when and in how much quantity those sort of over the top gags fit.

>I just feel like Zach has to learn when and in how much quantity those sort of over the top gags fit.
Very much so, yes.

I really like Paranatural, but I don't understand why Zack wants to use such cheap soap opera tricks that alienate readers. I'd be more exited for the next page if he just said what he's there for. Like, oh, how is Max going to react and such. It would feel like having fun, wouldn't it? But the cliffhanger here just bores me, there is no emotion besides having to wait for Tuesday.

Zack really doesn't seem to get why people are there. Goofy hijinks are fun, but when you make a huge plot arc loom over people like "Who the fuck is this brain monster possessing" people don't care about some dumpy chubby girl with zero plot relevance or known ties to characters already intertwined in the plot.

I don't have these problems with the story. It's supposed to be just another day in school for Paranatural activity club (maybe with a tougher spirit than usually, we don't really know). Suppose dealing with a ghost is as dramatic for them as having a soda with some friends at a cafe. Or being worried about your relationship with your friends. That's fine, even an interesting, original concept. But it's created tension everywhere, equally, in an attempt to be a pageturner and it just leaves me uninterested. If you watch enough horror movies, you don't get thrilled as easily. I know it was supposed to be ironic anime imagery at first, but it's like the south park episode where they can't stop being sarcastic.

speak for yourself. There's just a hate boner bandwagon and whenever there's a bandwagon like this people who don't agree don't speak up much and don't care to.

I've been reading webcomics for over a decade and don't understand what you're all actually upset about here. It seems you set high standards with little reason. As if you started reading this comic well into it and then after a year of following you realize it's not as fast as you like.

The horror.

Show of hands, who still has Lackadaisy bookmarked and how do you deal with the 3 updates a year?

Slow pacing webcomics 101: put it in a folder that you only read once a month, few months, year, etc. depending on update speed and pacing.

All that said, this webcomic is far from the worst even out of other highly praised comics.

You're all a bunch of finicky fucks. I see nothing wrong with this comic compared to just other comics of its caliber.

You know what the difference between Lackadaisy and Paranatural are, currently?
The former has amazing art. Paranatural's art has been getting worse as time goes on.

I wouldn't be complaining as much if Paranatural's art hadn't regressed in quality.

There are a lot more differences than that, I wasn't comparing them directly, only the pacing coupled with updates.

Also I still think you're all exaggerating the art in the way people nitpick when they're dead set on criticizing something so they want more things to complain about.

I see improvement in form and consistancy but a loss in vibrant color and more detail given to backgrounds. The paneling has been better than it has been in much of this chapter, but not even enough to bitch about.

This is the kind of thing that goes in circles. You're nitpicking one thing, and when that doesn't hold you say the real problem is another thing. Get off the fucking bandwagon.

Put the bookmark in a folder for a few months and revisit this comic later and see if you're still grumps about it.

You still read this comic after Zack the hack turned a joke character into a agenda that he's trying to shove down his readers throats?

LOL?

>he thinks the only problem we have it is the pacing
lol kys

>popularizing trans malarkey only reinforces largely irrelevant gender roles

Yum yum, backfire.

It's the only problem you have. The rest are petty nitpicks of the kind people come up with when they circlejerk their discontent into disgruntlement, dislike, all the way into a full throttle bitchfest.

It happens every time. Every fucking piece of media on the internet gets it. People feel mildly annoyed with something and after a month or two of threads on the topic they've discovered they hate every facet of the thing and things were way better at some earlier point in time.

No. You're only really mad about one thing, and it's not even a thing. You just made it into a thing and decided to pick at the scenery a bit to justify it all.

>wobbly lines
>correct perspective in 3rd panel

How does he produce these comics? Does he make a series of draft guidelines and then just hand-draw straight lines over them?

So people complaining about anything is unjustified, and mere nitpicking ?
Well fuck you, clearly you haven't seen the threads from a few years ago when anons were praising Zack and Paranatural for being a good webcomic. When it had backgrounds with little things to pick up on, details that people could appreciate. When the story wasn't stuck with more and more useless pages. When the current chapter wasn't 2 years in the making. When the art style was rawer and less bland. When jokes were everywhere. Things have changed. People here expected more. Not everyone, not on every point, but still.

lol no. Acting completely dismissive of other people's concerns because you are self-inflated and consider yourself to be a "wisened sage on the topic of webcomic discussion" doesn't make me value you're opinion more

I'll be the first to admit that the zack starting to pander to SJW's in the comic left me with a really bad taste in my mouth (inb4 goback2/pol/ hurr), but saying the comic has no problems is denial

The tone of the comic has dramatically shifted from a cool adventure to some bland tumblrcore, not to mention everything is Dramatic! now. Which was a funny shtick at first but now its stale. Zack's gotten lazy with his line quality and colors really have turned bleached & bright as fuck recently. How the fuck can you not notice that. The amount of wordplay & punnery has also definitely taken a sharp downturn, every page used to be full of it, and now its only a rather occasional occurrence, if even that. granted, some people hate puns but I love that sort of stuff. The writing/jokes is taking an upturn in the recent pages, but the date scene with Day and Zarei was actually fucking awful and cringy. is this your first thread because how can you think the pacing is the only problem? the fuck mate

So uh, yea, no, just because you think others are trying to find things to hate doesn't mean you're aren't overlooking or automatically looking past all of its failures. Disliking or liking anything because of some principle really, really changes any person's tendency to look past its failures and be generally ok with it, and this goes double for media like comics & shows. No wonder people started to hate paranatural when it turned tumblrcore. The pacing is an easy and an omnipresent thing to gripe about but fuck off for implying its completely unreasonable to find fault with it.

*No wonder people started to discover paranatural's faults they previously overlooked when it turned tumblrcore.
small but important correction imo

That's a very common practice with digital artists. It keeps the backgrounds from looking unnaturally clean compared to the characters.

No idiot, that's not what I said and if you read more than a line you'd know it. I've been watching this bitchfest build up about this comic. Mild discontent with pacing snowballed into 'everything' being 'worse than before'.

There's no less detail in the backgrounds, they're cleaner looking for one. There are easter eggs, you're all just too upset over the "decline" to really care. "details details details". Looking back there's no less detail, just rougher and thicker linework, which can maybe look like there's more detail to a complete idiot looking for something to bitch about, but a lack of detail is not actually the case.

The complaints about the art quality are greatly exaggerated and nothing more than a nitpick added to the growing bags of complaints you've been collecting.

How long do you think it will be before this is relevant again?

>Mild discontent with pacing snowballed into 'everything' being 'worse than before'.
maybe cuz everything actually is worse than before? its ok to realize that zack has grown bored with the comic and doesn't put as much effort into it as he used to.

>There's no less detail in the backgrounds
w-what backgrounds?

And also a steady decline in interesting angles. Hell, the art wasn't even that bad at around Hitball, there were tons of great pages in that. I don't know why you're so adamant that there are no legitimate complaints with this comic. Just fucking give it up bro, maybe some people who dislike something aren't on a bandwagon.

There's a lot more problems going on with the pacing than just the slow update schedule. If you can't notice it even when reading it in bulk then you just have very low standards for webcomics or haven't actually read enough to make a solid comparison, because reading the early chapters versus the current ones makes it clear as day.

Lately Paranatural has been following this structure of "Character is in the middle of a mission, they're approached by another character, they have a wacky/dramatic conversation unrelated to the current plot, it ends on a joke and the scene moves onto the next vignette." It already existed beforehand, which is fine because it makes for decent joke setups, but as Zack has moved the comic from a lighthearted kids adventure with 40 page chapters to a big anime mystery with multiple conflicting factions with chapters that last 150 pages it's caused a real problem.

Nothings ever moving forward at a satisfying pace. He's juggling a million subplots all at the same time within the same chapter, while ignoring the core story of the chapter to do so. While there's always some development happening, whether it's Zarei's relationship problems or Zack's conflict with the student council, the lack of focus causes the story to crawl along. The gang has been following the teachers trying to find Hijack now for 90 fucking pages and no progress has been made, and that's ignoring the entirety of the chapter before they entered the office and caught up to the in-media res.

Zack needs an editor, or at least someone to look over his rough drafts and help him structure things a bit more. Imagine if he did a chapter about the teachers post-Train and how their situation has changed, then a chapter about Max and his blackmailing, and then a chapter about Hitball and Hijack. Everything would be given the time to breathe and follow a more natural pacing. It works for other webcomics like Gunnerkrigg, and for Paranatural in its first few chapters.

To be fair the lack of angles and action poses is a byproduct of the complete fucking lack of action itself.

two years
how long until THIS is relevant?

>we've got a circle of JERKS to report to
kek circlejerk

>Zack's gotten lazy with his line quality.
False They have improved, become cleaner, and thinned out. Opposite of lazy.
>and colors really have turned bleached & bright

desaturated, but they were oversaturated before. Compare outdoors pages in chapter 2 with current indoors and the color have a much wider range and are better applied, but they're desaturated. Good and bad changes but nothing dramatic. It could just be him trying to make it look more like indoor lighting.

This is a petty nitpick like all the art complaints. Worth giving him so he might take into consideration and improve if he thinks he should, but not worth getting upset over.

>Disliking or liking anything because of some principle really, really changes any person's tendency to look past its failures
Only if you're a childish fuck who has set their mind to being mad and then looks for more things to be mad about. You're not suddenly less forgiving of failures, you're just more picky about everything, which doesn't make the comic bad, it just makes you insufferable.

>I'll be the first to admit that the zack starting to pander to SJW's in the comic left me with a really bad taste in my mouth
>The tone of the comic has dramatically shifted from a cool adventure to some bland tumblrcore

This is all complete nonsense and I can't believe you made me read it. It's made up controversy because you're hyper sensitive to all that fucking tumblr and SJW drama. That's about as much of that autistic splurge as I'm going to humor. You are literally the worst kind of person on this site.

don't expect to be taken seriously if you actually use words like "tumblrcore" for anything but memes user.

>Cody still doesn't have a boyfriend
Cody getting a boyfriend arc WHEN

>maybe cuz everything actually is worse than before? its ok to realize that zack has grown bored with the comic and doesn't put as much effort into it as he used to.
This is a pattern you'll have to pick up on eventually. Things that you start to get bored with are not getting worse, you're just not as interested in them. Either take a break from them, drop them, or just accept that they won't feel as good as they did before.

The new season of that show you loved isn't shit, it's just in your head.

This comic is not "worse than before". The pacing is more stretched than it should be but that can get better and it's nothing to be really upset with. That's about it.

Clean linework =/= good linework in all cases. It's dependent on what you're going for. And for Paranatural those kind of lines just make it look sterile and bland. There was NEVER a problem with colors being too saturated, and if there was, turning each page into a pastel mess was not the answer
>Plebcomics image
Oh wait, you were born with your shit taste. There's nothing I can do to help, then.

That's an action page from an action scene with only action and no dialogue.

We are currently in a no action part of a less actiony chapter.

You're nitpicking.

Here's a non-action page with a metric fuckton of word dump. Tell me which looks better, this or the most recent page

>I've been watching this bitchfest build up about this comic
If you did you'd get why anons are disgruntled.

>There's no less detail in the backgrounds, they're cleaner looking for one
There are barely any actual backgrounds anymore. Most panels have bright colors behind the characters. When an actual background appears, like the school store, it's erased in the following pages. Zack did it before, but now it's all over the place. The ratio between cool pages full of things to see and mere colored backgrounds has shifted for something less interesting to look at.

Just look at previous chapters and see the evolution for yourself.

>become cleaner
absolutey not. I mean, yeah, obviously the very beginning pages of the comic are actually not very masterfully drawn but compared to mid-comic, current lines definitely edge past where they're supposed to end. Kek. Maybe its not noticeable to you but it sticks out to me

>petty nitpick
>dont even nitpick its petty you children

>Only if you're a childish fuck who has set their mind to being mad and then looks for more things to be mad about.
No, that's human nature pal. Get used to it. You see this everywhere.

>oh no he doesn't like muh sjw nonsense
No wonder you are so willing to overlook everything. What was that about being a childish fuck who has their mind to being mad and then looks for more things to be mad about? Couldn't you say that's what you're doing to the very anons itt? lmao.

Listen, I understand that you are obviously feeling frustrated that parantural threads have become very toxic and negative, but daily reminder that adversity inspires greatness. Maybe zack would be in a better place if he came here after every update

>Clean linework =/= good linework in all cases.
It does here.

>those kind of lines just make it look sterile and bland.
and before it looked dirty and bad. A balance is needed between the extremes but I think he'll figure it out eventually. It's a natural pattern for comic artists as they develop their linework.

>There was NEVER a problem with colors being too saturated
I could nitpick why I think that's not the case, but it's not any more a problem than the current desaturation

None of these are big enough problems even together to warrant the bitching these threads have. It's nitpicking and nothing more.

>Plebcomics image
The reason for that pic just went over your head didn't it. That's ok.

>is a byproduct of the complete fucking lack of action itself.
I'm not trying to say you're wrong, but
If dialogue and funny faces is the most you can offer for a page, the least you can do is try and punch up the visual appeal.

>A balance is needed between the extremes but I think he'll figure it out eventually. It's a natural pattern for comic artists as they develop their linework.

That's optimistic, but I think he's going for a simpler lazier look to make it easier to churn the comics out. Happens to a lot of webcomics. Look at Penny Arcade, they hit an artistic peak seven years ago and the aesthetic slowly imploded no matter how many people said "it's just a little airborne, it's still good".

This page's dialogue is fucking amazing.

That is a nice page that does show off the use of angles, but not every page is an example of that, and the majority from back then are not that different in their use of angles than any recent ones.

First off
>The reason for that pic just went over your head didn't it. That's ok.
I frankly don't care for what reason you posted some shitty plebcomics drawing of Jon Tron of all things. It's just telling that you have that on your hard drive, bruh

The linework looks like something an amateur would shit out on Paint Tool SAI. It's not necessarily technically bad, sure, but it's so toothless looking.

I don't see why it's hard to understand that, if you enjoyed a comic for certain aspects, then you'd be displeased that each of those aspects took a turn in a direction you didn't like. It's not that all of these things make the comic unreadable, but they cumulatively bring it down to the point where it's only sort of attractive anymore

>If you did you'd get why anons are disgruntled.
And I did.

>There are barely any actual backgrounds anymore.
In the sterile and brightly lit empty hallways and classrooms. He includes backgrounds to set the scene and then switches to cheaper tactics, but arguably not that different than what he did in older school pages, where back then he just used out of focus blobs vaguely looking like students, desks, and lockers. He swapped that tactic for using more patterns and shit.

Nitpicking.