Paranatural

>hey man listen i was just gonna wiggle the sunglasses up and down to emphasize my surprise

>Everybody, freaky shadow spirit. Freaky shadow spirit, everybody.


IT'S HAPPENING

neato. I feel like the face could be a little more detailed, but maybe it works because it's a shadow creature. Is this some kind of greco-roman reference? going by the pillars.

I was expecting something monstrous, but that's one handsome shadow thing.

feels like it should be darker, the grays seem too light to make it imposing
that said, it's pretty neat

It works because it's an abstract kind of face. The kind you see on sculptures of the sun.

It is odd that a shadow spirit has yellow spectral energy, but if it's the Black Sun/a fallen sun god/etc. then that explains its surprisingly sunny color.

In a comic as colorful as Paranatural is these days, I find gray to be pretty imposing all on its own.

What should be sun rays -> dark tentacles.

Yeah, it's not really scaring me if that's the intent. Seeing the monster in broad daylight always makes it significantly less scary, but Zack's been doing this bright pastel thing for a while so it sadly fits with the current style. It'd be much spookier if you could still see its features but they were more obscured.

I get it's a sun god and obviously that hole in its face represents an eclipse, but is that hole naturally a part of the spirit or was it put there?

Nice, so the spirit was an emoji all this time!

There's something unnerving about a completely empty, expressionless face that's more like a statue, despite the hints to its intelligence and malevolence.

Like coming across the crumbling giant face statues in the game Aquaria, and the mocking laughter that comes from nowhere. It's supposed to be slightly freaky, there's obviously more to it than what we're seeing but we have no idea what it is.

I think he looks nice!

>still reading “yes I can use flat colour as a background” paranatural
Wew

When are we getting Spender flashback

>tfw you disappoint Papa Lucifer

>Lucifer doesn't casually scold Spender saying "I know you're gay but you have to focus".
Shit comic.

>tfw Evangelicals' Jerusalem Rapture keikaku will come sooner then this chapter will end, let alone an origins chapter

All for the "Promised Boys", user...all for the Promised Boys.

First interesting page in years.

The only things I've seen consistently being praised about Zack are his spirit designs.

>just a face with tentacles
Not your best work here, Zack. Hope there is more to it. You could at least detailled it more, the lazy shading doesn't do any justice to the sense of dread we're supposed to feel.

Shit, just compare between this and OP's pic. The quality keeps declining again and again.

Clearly it’s an argentinian sun.

Goddamn Lucifer is so based.

But Argentina is white!

AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHH

Kinda weird thing to focus on but have we seen a spirit use spectral energy constructs like Hijack is doing right now? I just remember Forge scoffing at Spender for using them.

He's done it before but he used Spender's body to do it so I dunno if it's different.

I miss Suzy.

I'm really digging the hole in the left side of the face/mask. It references and contrasts the inspiration from sun sculptures both by appearing to be something like an eclipse, and (I'm assuming this was the intent) it forms a crescent moon from the negative space. Another interesting thing is that rather than simply being a damaged portion of the face/mask, the two dripping black "tears" under it can give the impression that the hole is there by design as one gigantic, hungry eye, contrasting the smaller, somewhat disinterested eye.
Say what you want about the shitty pastels, the terrible pacing, characters being mishandled, the social justice pandering, the stark refusal to draw backgrounds...I still love all of Zack's designs for the various spirits.

In five pages

I'm still not sure if Lucifer wants Hijack to bring this info back to Zarei, but I'm starting to lean towards "no".

>nuclear bomb
Judy?

Can spirits change shape over time? It occurs to me that if Lucifer is over six hundred years old, then he is vastly older than the concept of light bulbs, despite having that be one of his motifs.

>you've been stalling for

Why does he need to stall remove the shades from Spender? Lucifer really should have told him right from the offset that trying to get rid of him would be a really bad idea.

Thing is Hijack already knows that Spender is a medium for "some freaky shadow spirit" (Lucifer is quoting what Isabel unintentionally told Hjack in case anyone has forgotten) so this is only really confirming what Hijack already knows (and may have already told Zarei in the phone message, Lucifer really should have stopped him before sending that message, not sure I have enough faith in Zack that they'll be a reason why he didn't).

The big bad is Argentina?

Probably
thus why he's currently a messy amalgamation of motifs

I think Hijack wasn't certain if Lucifer could laser him to death before removing the sunglasses.

Argentina is WHITE!

I guess because up to that point, Hijack was doing what Lucifer wanted to do, since he didn't have much faith in Spender contacting Zarei on his own? I'm not really sure what made him lose his patience with Hijack now though.

>tfw remember absolutely none of this and dont feell like rereading the comic

God damn what happened to this comic

AAAAHHHHH

I love the design of this thing. It just looks and seems so utterly alien compared to nearly all the other Spirits seen thus far, including the Pixel Hounds. I wonder how many Cursed Words it knows?

...

So that looks like it definitely qualifies as a Broken God.

Based wristposter

Jet fuel can't-

Melt steel beams.

Zack's lost a lot of enthusiasm for it.

I suspect that it would be closer to a piece of it. Do remember that Max got possessed during his talk with Doorman by a Spirit that Doorman called a "broken god". So it's likely that the God ended up shattered, and it's pieces are just spread out and wreaking havoc.

...

So Max has a piece of the broken god Not Scrapdragon
Argentina is probably a piece of the broken god
How many do you think there are

I can't be the only one who thought of this, right?

Do you remember the days of saturation? Before Zack forgot what colour was?

Lefty used them, but he's a ghost. Isobel's grandpa might also be a ghost.

Also, the gaping eye opens into the darkness of the background, so it's possible that black background is actually part of this spirit.

Jowday.

Just caught up and read this.

So Spender's gay?
And did a teacher just admit to having causal sex with a co-worker to a student?

It's the wrong color if the other piece is black.

Could be just 'casually dating' but we can't be sure.

The technical name is the Incan sun god, Inti.

But funny thing, unlike on the Argentina flag, this guy has a much tinier nose.

So he really IS a white Argentina.

Did the nation that spent a century wiping out native populations and boasting about how "they came from European ships" really use a native symbol in their flag?
Might as well have the descendants of Andrew Jackson using Cherokee symbols as the family emblem.

>filename
kek

God that's boring. This is what we've been waiting for, for years.
I expecting something more unsettling.

Wasn't this before Hijack's possession?

Nope, go back and see. That's why he's apologizing to Max, and why he knows Zarei's techniques.

maybe they do together something embarrasing like playing dungeons and dragons

>coworkers dating
Im gonna vomit

>That's why he's apologizing to Max
Oh, so what I thought as character development was just body snatching alien's doing?

Well duh. Spender remains worst teacher. He could never actually compliment Isaac.

Holy shit, that's why the octopus was leaving Max. it was after Spender's chest.

It's also why he spent so long trying to apologize to Isabel.

Nice try America, but I'm on to you. The sun with face, also called the sun in splendour or Sun in his glory, was commonly used in Europe since the 1200s.

>That feel when you have to rise every day

Zack should quit webcomics and go into concept art.

It would certainly raise the average quality of webcomics by a non-negligible percent.

man, imagine how much cooler this page would look if he got to it before his art went to shit.

I find it plenty unsettling. The impassive face, the countless tentacles that are somehwere between shadow and solid, the giant hole in its face with a seemingly endless void behind it, the understanding that it's based off the sun (hence the sunlight-yellow spectral energy) and yet has become a shadow-monster?

Much spookier than some kind of squid/Cthulhu.

>le generic creepypasta monster

Yeah, that's not boring.

That's form Bloodborne.

All of this. Just imagine what this reveal would have looked like before everything got soft and pastel and bland as fuck.

It's unsettling specifically *BECAUSE* it looks so decidedly "Other" compared to everything else. It isn't doing any of the things you'd expect some nightmarish monstrosity to do, nor does it resemble what you'd normally expect. It's utterly impassive gaze, it's countless tentacles that blur the line between reality and unreality, the gaping hole in the side of its face from which the *true* totality of its being is expressed as a vast expanse of nothingness, and the whole Sun motif. All of these things come together to make this Spirit into something even more terrifying than it would be if it was just the normal many-mouthed, multi-tentacled beasty that so many writers and artists nowadays think qualify as "Good " cosmic horrors.

Doesnt look like the sun at all. "Sun motif", what a fucking stretch

The Sun of May symbol being based on the Incan sun god is just some anarchist's hypothesis. Probably just convergent symbolism.

...

Reminding myself just what shadow powers Spender manages to duplicate from this thing.

Making shadows solid.

And the opposite. Opening up the abyss.

>Spender and Lucifer don't even know what this fucking thing is
That's even more terrifying desu, all this time I had assumed they knew what they were dealing with and had things under control. Turns out they're trapped with something they don't understand at all, fuck, for all they know it could just be pretending to be imprisoned

Unless Lucifer is lying to Hijack. He pointedly doesn't explain when and how Spender became possessed by the thing.

Lucifer really has no reason to outright *Lie* to Hijack, especially if this thing is as dangerous as it is implied to be. Lucifer could just simply be showing the poor fool what he risks freeing should he continue with his delusional "plan". Obviously not the whole truth, but enough to make Hijack take a step-back to re-evaluate his life choices.

Man, I always wished there was a large poster version of that image. I'd so buy it.

Going on missions, then stopping at Max's convenience store house for victory snacks at night. Maximum adventure comfy.

Which will happen first?
The end of this arc
or
Half Life 3

My money's on Half Life

Stop posting old art, you're making me sad there's no going back.

I apologize user. It hurts me too to know that we'll never have the old art again because of pandering BS, but at least we still got somewhat cool characters and Spirits.

So he's been possessed by two spirits at all times and is actually 3 now?!

...

The border around panel 5 is really unnecessary, what was Zack thinking?

...

It's been foreshadowed since chapter 4.

>IT'S HAPPENING
In how many years?