Paranatural Thread - Chapter 5 Page 203

i put a roller skate on the wrong foot in panel 2 but we're gonna pretend i didn't and i'm gonna pretend i'm sleeping for the next 12 hours

>Hey guys! I'm going to be away from Wednesday to Thursday this week into the next, so there won't be a normal update the next three update days, BUT! Out of necessity I'm going to have a different Forge-centric Supernormal-esque comic up instead from a Forge-themed zine I've been pecking at when I've had free time. Sooo... Forge comics on Friday the 9th, Tuesday the 13th and Friday the 16th! And then back to normal updates! Thank you for reading! I didn't plan on sharing these Forge comics outside of the zine but I'm excited for you guys to see them either way!

:|

>The action sequence started more than a month ago
>It's been two hiatuses since then.
>Time for a two week hiatus.
Way to kill the mood.

He could have so easily used these action scenes separately to break up lesbian date/ old West saloon and all the other pointless parts of this chapter, there's no reason the fights have to take place at once, and it could have advanced Hijack plot while he went on his sidetracks.

>Can't even go a month without putting his comic on hiatus

Why do I read this

>those colors
I see what you did there and i like it

The action scene is still a mess. Nothing new.

250% this.

That would require him to have THOUGHT about them before now.
Or have any idea what the point of his story is.

>couldn't even get guest comics
>just gonna post random other shit completely unrelated to the comic as filler

>Yet another fucking hiatus
Also is it just me or does this page look even worse than usual?

I've found the new action sequences to be pretty unfollowable but I like particularly clean action, even published manga can give me the shits if it gets to 'experimental' with its composition.

To be fair, these pages have great flow and skipping back and forth.

To be also fair, it had been a solid 100 pages since we last saw Hijack.

Yet more action.
Come on...
Really?

>another hiatus
THE MADMAN

There is a right-to-left panel transition in this page.

A right-to-left following a left-to-right that is so poorly laid out that it looks like a right-to-left.

Trace where your eyes go when you read this. It's a clusterfuck.

He copied manga too hard and forgot you read comics left-to-right in the west.

Oh look yet another break

You know, I actually do appreciate what Zack's trying in this sequence with the paneling.

It's just not working very well, is all.

>He copied manga too hard
Wow Isaac really was a self-insert.

If each confrontation was separate, we already would have been able to shave off two pages from bad transitional panels alone.

>actually checked back on the original page in the website
>mfw observable differences
The recolouring job is such an improvement I actually went back here - when I already stopped otherwise from the comic's TERRIBLY sluggish pace - because the page visuals actually grabbed onto my attention! Good job, OP.

Also: Pfftt, Isaac can just throw away his jacket to save himself.

He COULD'VE done that...but he either didn't, or won't do that.

IMO fixing that aspect still wouldn't solve the other major problems this chapter has (for me), anyway.

>1 background
>doesn't even have anything good in it

He just fiddled with the existing colors in Photoshop, it's not a recolor.

Fuck me if it isn't several times more eye catching than the art on the site, though.

>springfoot Zach
>good at background
Perhaps you're mistaking him for Zach Morrison the ametuer artist who did a few comics a few years back. I haven'y seen him draw in yonks but I get why you would confuse them given how similar their names are.

Why is all the action happening from right to left, does Zack think he's writing manga?
You read panel 4 before panel 3. Then you read panel 6 before panel 5. But you can't read panel 8 before panel 7, even if the text pulls you in that direction.

Are you telling me you though [z/h]ach was a meme this whole time? We tried warning you. First his line work. Then his backgrounds. Then his writing. Then his colouring. Then his expressions. Then his pacing. Now his structure.
I mean that back and forth is fucking Diaz tier. Zach has lost any 'talent' he was showing in his early career.

Reread the first two chapters, I fucking dare you. Marvel at what this comic has become.

jesus christ paranatural used to be my favorite webcomic, what happened?

>hey guys my wrist has ouchies, no updates this week!
>hey guys i'm gonna go to Convention #586 this year, no updates for 2 weeks
>hey guys i'm going to visit my family, no updates!
>spends the rest of his time angrily posting about donald trump, trans rights and other bullshit

then there's this mess of an action scene and the fact that the story is going absolutely nowhere. it's been 2 years since chapter 5 started, absolutely nothing of value has happened except hijack infiltrated the school.

i liked paranatural when it was a monster of the week ghost hunting thing, i also liked paranatural when the story got a bit deeper, but now there's just nothing going on at all. what we got this chapter was:

- wacky dodgeball game that served no purpose
- lesbian date that served no purpose
- 2 pages of zack- oh i mean JOHNNY explaining what a nonbinary person is, which is important for some reason
- oh i think there's also something about hunting ghosts or something

when is this going to end? will it get better?

>spends the rest of his time angrily posting about donald trump, trans rights and other bullshit
Does he now? I'm so glad I don't 'do' twitter.

>yet another hiatus

Zack for the love of god: BUILD UP A GOD DAMN BUFFER! Maybe if you did that your fucking wrists wouldn't be falling apart every week. Are his die hard fans honestly this fucking patient that they're okay with him just taking breaks at pure random? Does Zack even have a day job outside this comic? There's no good excuse for this constant on/off breaks.

>shit post on twitter all day and occasionally draw a single comic page
What a life

>spends the rest of his time angrily posting about donald trump
Can't blame him, the American presidential elections had been so polarizing and chaotic the fallout still lingers on...and some cope with the aftermath in many different ways.

The panicky news that rolls out of America's new management (the stopped Bans, the Russian scandals etc) now feels like cinematic schadenfruede to me. At least when Obama won years ago, there was little observable opposition and the losing party conceded their loss so maturely (at least to my non-American eyes). You had massive protests down to the black flag riots happening when Trump took the oath to office, becuase the approval ratings were so low! Even if Clinton won, that still won't stop the demonizing you folks have been doing on each other whenever discourses on liberal or conservative leaning policies are going on long before the results come in. Heck, you guys made 'liberal' and 'conservative' derogatory labels! Make America Laughed At Again / America Has Always Been Laughed At, more like...

How is he still getting support on Patreon?

What's the point of 2 updates a week if he's going to be taking week hiatuses in between?

>I'm going to be away from Wednesday to Thursday this week into the next, so there won't be a normal update the next three update days

AAAAAAAAAGGHHHH

Believe us, this isn't our fault. The media runs rampant and controls the masses, enforcing the US vs THEM mentality. Nothing can actually stop it, people are being raised to hate anyone who even slightly disagrees with them.

You also forgot how Johnny quickly gets his spectral senses right after being possessed the night before (i.e in Chapter 4)...there goes the "how far bad Normie!Johnny can go" suspense thrown out the window.

There's a Stockholm phenomenon on the internet where, after a certain level of exposure, you will never stop receiving money. A small number of desperate fans will always, ALWAYS pay you in the hopes of more content. Aaron Diaz is paid well to put out six pages a year.

oh yeah, and that

but we honestly shouldn't complain, i mean we got like 5 panels with actual backgrounds in the past 2 months!!

>tfw no best girl this update
>tfw no best girl next week

Pie chart user has returned!
>AND THAT'S THE END OF CHAPTER 4!!! I hope you all enjoyed what will most likely be Paranatural's longest chapter.

Only 101 more pages until Chapter 5 accounts for half of the run.

I'm still waiting on explicit confirmation that Garcia is posessed

The fact that there's still even a little bit of room for some kind of wacky reveal seriously worries me

this. 100% sure it's gonna be a "none of the teachers were possessed haha!" thing

why is this starchman fight even a thing
it has no bearing on the actual plot does it

Zack probably thinks it's hilarious.

I get the feeling the sudden action scene is because Zack is trying his damndest to not allow that to happen.

>Chapter 5 is officially 1/3 of the comic, dethroning Chapter 4 even in relative scope.

And is the end of Chapter 5 in sight? WHO FUCKING KNOWS!

Yeah, if I end up reading Paranatural it's always on here, there's pretty much no reason for me to justify giving Zack's website views any more. Especially when you compare him to artists like Abbadon or Ashley Cope. At least when they delay a page, you know it's because they're prepping something that takes actual work, like his Where's YS-Waldo spreads or her Khert illustrations.

Still has a better work ethic than Diaz, though.

>we could get three cool chapter 1's with the time we lost in chapter 5
God.. why..

Meant for
Don't jinx it.

Four, if you assume we returned to a pre-explosion wrist.

>chapters 1-3 took about 2 and a half years
>chapters 4-5 now over 4 years

What could have been

>it's been 2 years since chapter 5 started
Oh c'mon, user.
It's been 2.5 years.

yeah i realize that now, my bad

Because he doesn't have an editor, and we totally needed to know that the fat blind black chick was super lesbian.

The chances of Garcia being possessed are pretty much nil when we still haven't explained his appearance in the creek back in Chapter 3.

we homestuck now

So I haven't read Paranatural since I moved nine months ago. What's happened? Do we know about the monsters in Mayview yet? What about the Cousinhood?

You can improve every page of modern Paratural by running it through the colour enhancer add-in that just ramps up the saturation.

reminder to read K6BD and unsounded because they're way better than this shit

I like this fanartist, but I don't like that they're using this much skill on fanart of a character who probably won't show up for another 2 years real time.

Lesbian date between a fat black girl and a muslim, some girl talks to Max about aliens, Isabel's new spirit is a turtle, Johnny explains to Ed that RJ is asexual, the student council tries to recruit Max, backgrounds still missing and presumed dead.
So a lot, yet nothing at all.

>Zarei
>Strong stoic personality

Yeah, right. Maybe before the lesbianing.

>ever talking about an artist "wasting skill"
this always reads like a talentless faggot who can do nothing but consume and not produce to me

I have to wonder about webcomic artists like Zack who do this full-time and still can't manage to build a buffer. He doesn't even do THAT many conventions a year, and you know like a year in advance about those, so why can't you prepare even one page in advance? I just don't get it. Especially if you're living off patreon, you think you would prioritize getting a solid update stream going.

Like I've noticed this with Zack, his girlfriend, and even Sakana's artist, amongst others (though they at least seem to draft ahead and don't have the same pacing problems). They all wait until what seems to be the last minute to finish pages, to the point that it delays updates for hours or days. Why? Why not take an entire day to sketch a good 10+ pages out and then spend the week inking and coloring as your chronic wrist pains allow? I guarantee it would help with some of the terrible fucking pacing too to be forced to see sequences as a whole. What the fuck else are you doing if this is ostensibly your full-time job? Things like merch art and side products should take a backseat.

Seeing Lucifer again made me realize that the only component of this comic which has stayed consistently high quality is Zack's ability to design spirits. They're all visually interesting, and each has tons of little details in its design that tie into its overall theme and powerset.
Zack should just give up trying to do a whole comic and just post character bios for the spirits he cooks up. He wouldn't even have to have an excuse for not drawing backgrounds then.

Calm down, Zack

*fat black blind girl
*agender

Wow it's another "this webcomic has gone to shit because (arbitrary/nitpick reasons) I'm so upset but keep reading it" thread.

It's almost like people here are spoiled by how good webcomics are these days.

barely anything has happened, but at least we know that agent zarei and agent day are lesbians

Tell me how much you love chapter 5, user.

As long as in the heart, within,
This user still yearns
And onward, towards the end of this comic,
his eyes gazes towards...this partnership too cool to refuse.

I just want this to happen (again?) even just once before me eyes. I would've asked for more back when this comic still had much of its charm and excitement, but now...this comes true, and I consider my scores settled. Content.

He's part of a whole group of people who seem determined to kill their own webcomic brand.