Wow, Zack, getting a little too real, aren't you?

You would think he would be proud that his work could bring people of wildly different beliefs and backgrounds together.

>When you need to pander so hard but you can't make new characters to fit them all.
>When you pander so hard that you disregard the source of something and just absolutely rape the concept.

>there are actually people upset about the comic on the left because it could possibly be canon to their race of fictional space monsters and therefore fictionally lewd
Humanity is fucked.

Don't forget the RAMPANT TRANSPHOBIA seen from Hella Jeff's lipstick.

Did he really edit that comic a second time and dub all that text over it? The pixelized version he submitted immediately after was hilarious. That's just... overkill.

It's amazing how a good joke can be so utterly destroy. It feels like ashes in my mouth.

Fucking hell. I didn't even notice.

OK, so how many story threads are there going on simultaneously in this comic right now?

>Max's secret meeting
>Newspaper club's spying
>Isabel and Spender talk about their feelings
>Ed getting interrogated
>Isaac following the real Hijack
>Zarei and Day on a date

Are there any that I'm forgetting?

The weird thing is he's trying to piss off Cred Forums, when the only board that even know he exists is the basically Tumblr Cred Forums.

Although, I don't think the dip in Paranatural is intentional, I think he just lost it.

It's a shame, he was so talented from such a young age, and just shit the bed in nearly every aspect.

Even the art's worse looking, though, technically better, I guess.
I thought it was because it was gore, or something stupid.

Granted, it was always something stupid

Maybe it was just because of how gruesome it looks. I just assumed the alien space penis had someone triggered. Maybe some feminist out there thinks that's what a real penis looks like.

Why in the name of Christ's Holy Handbag would you include this character's date in a chapter that already had fucking Hitball, another incredibly long setpiece.

>The weird thing is he's trying to piss off Cred Forums

Cred Forums here. Him ruining his comic with this sort of pandering isn't pissing me off; it's just disappointing.

He said that like 8 years ago. This comic is fucking garbage and NOTHING HAPPENS.

I can't get over how bad this is. There's no plot or narrative it's just a full page of jokes and funny faces and tangents.

"Guys there's something serious happening that could further the plot..."

"WHY DO YOU END ALL YOUR SENTENCES WITH DOT DOT DOT"

"Because dot dot dot it makes me look cool dot dot dot"

>sorry guys i hurt my hand drawing funny faces see you in three weeks will something interesting happen? probably not

The pacing is pretty shit, but I don't have a problem following a comic that is 90% silly faces. But once it starts insulting my intelligence and trying its best to be for someone else completely than the people who were already reading it, I do feel pretty alienated.

Is he trading up? Am I, the person reading for kids on adventures, not good enough for him?

>Why in the name of Christ's Holy Handbag would you include this character's date in a chapter that already had fucking Hitball, another incredibly long setpiece.
It really does detract. This could be the start of next chapter, or a side chapter in between. Hell, Chapter 4 and 5 could each themselves be 2-3 chapters, with very simple splits.

Gotta get them Millennial points before the pendulum swings back after 2.5 years of Clinton

>inb4 the leader of the organization is a Nubian Queen

>2.5 years of Clinton
>IM-FUCKING-PLYING

Why are people assuming she's a Muslim? I mean she lives in a world of spirits magic and ghosts doesn't that kinda clash with the whole Muslim ideology.

I am a millennial liberal SJW and this comic is the most offensive shit I've seen in a while.

I can laugh at Cred Forums and feel superior to them. This comic is outright embarrassing and I wish it didn't exist.

This

I'm also Cred Forums. I didn't care about the muslim doctor at first, because then it wasn't diversity for the sake of diversity. It was just another person in the comic.

But now?.. Totally ruins the atmosphere. it isn't a fun atmosphere. Its an awkward forced atmosphere. he didn't even drop the hint that the doctor was gay in a fun way, he literally forced it in when he made the silkworm thing "I know ur gay, but..." And of course it had to happen with the muslim who's also a woman and a doctor. forced diversity is fucking lame because you know he's only doing it for virtue signalling

this

The problem with it is that there's supposedly an overreaching threat that has no weight when it constantly gets interrupted.

Hitball should have been its own, episodic chapter after the train to cleanse the palate before the next long chapter.

As of now, this chapter is reaching 2 years in length, and is basically just beginning its second act.

This is the kind of shit that absolutely kills serial media; I think the Autist Homeworld calls it "Arc Fatigue"

You're right, she's wearing a hijab and has kebab skin because it's trendy.

are you meme-ing or are you actually a leftie SJW type

how is the comic offensive? just wonderin

Well, she could die earlier than that, but still.

However long she gets

She probably wouldn't be wearing a hijab if she didn't practice although who knows, maybe she just likes wearing.

But I'd argue that supernatural shit is the biggest evidence pointing to some kind of divine being. Holy books already talk about otherworldly powers and how humans can't really perceive them. A big metallic snake monster that stops time is closer to some depictions of angels than winged men are.

Not current, but off the top of my head things that need to be resolved eventually that we may never get to are:

Something about Max and his family (or just Max) needing to go out of town to visit old friends
Those punks that showed up at the convenience store his dad runs
Something something Mr.Garcia before the Hijack thing
PJ and the glove ghost
Disappointing PJ
Max's dead mom
Shadow pajama secret club Max was recruited into or something
Forge/Johnny
Max and his eel thing

There's probably more, but I can't really remember since it's been so long.

If he actually planned this out well, most of these would have been touched on more by now, but at this rate we'll keep going off into side-stories and have arbitrary panels as his hand finally finishes disintegrating and he finally calls it quits

>Implying there aren't people who wear hijabs who aren't Muslim
Some do it cause they think it's trendy and others do it out of some bullshit notion of support but it definitely happens.

Forced diversity isn't shit because EW MINORITIES GET IT AWAY FROM ME

It's shit because all it is is a well-off middle class nobody going GUYS LOOK I'M SO TOLERANT LOOK IT'S *YOU* AREN'T YOU HAPPY? I'M SUCH A GOOD PERSON HUH?

You're treating your audience like they're just a bunch of checkboxes for you to tick off one by one and feel good about yourself for doing it

Okay, so that one line, THE one line.

I feel like, were this a straight situation, Patchworm would not need to point out that Mina was in fact, straight. This alone reinforces that homosexuality is against the norm; unexpected. JUST by addressing it, it treats that fact as if it needs to be addressed instead of, yknow, just apparent. Considering that this chapter ALSO has another character express gay interest without needing to spell it out, this comes across as worse pandering than that. By specifically making a point to acknowledge it, it's not being normalized. If you want homosexuality to be un-taboo, then don't make a fuss about it. If it's important, it''s going to be obvious without needing to drop that one line.

Not them, but being condescending and pointing out that you're trying to impress with big flashing lights isn't flattering.

It's insulting.

People will point and laugh or pretend that this is good, smart representation. No one will criticize it because people will trick themselves into thinking it's good writing. It's a good thing he took down his comments, I would've blown them up.

Realistically it's totally harmless but I demand better and Paranatural is popular enough to inspire a new wave of artists who write this dumb shit.

You could fix this by having Patchworm say "You are so gay" or somesort in a disparaging way, as it would be natural and tell us something about him.

Instead it reads like he needed to stop for the audience's sake.

I mean she just admired to being gay, and since that's kind of a no-no for Muslims it makes me doubt she's seriously intended to be one

How many muslims have blown up Zach's twitter about how this is a disgraceful depiction of islam
What with her being a sinner and all

Right, it treats the audience as being unintelligent. She's already blushing and then starts doing the red colored words, the audience gets it.

>that 7th panel
Wow, more like BEN Morrison, amirite?

I hear of homosexuals who consider themselves Christians. I don't understand it but it happens.

None I would imagine. I don't think she ever admired to being a Muslim, he's probably just having her wear it for diversity points.

If being a sinner barred you from being religious there would be 0 religious people.

There are gay Muslims. And ironically they're pleading for Western countries to stop pitying them because it's inspiring terrorist groups to hunt them down to outrage the West.

But why not join a different religion that doesn't hate you
I just don't understand

>But why not join a different religion that doesn't hate you
lmao do you not know how Islam works? You're not allowed to leave.

If you're already a sinner and going to hell I don't think leaving can do much worse
Abrahamic religions are all bullshit anyway and their gods aren't real so who gives a fuck in the first place

>There are gay muslims.
Dead ones yeah. If you aren't a straight guy chances are you're fucked. Unlike Christianity which is pretty damn flexible about stuff (women wearing men's clothes was deemed heresy before and thus punishable by death) Islam isn't. Though this whole discussion would be nonsense if she is indeed, just wearing a hijab just for kicks.

>I just don't understand
You really should read the Qu'ran some time; shit's hilarious. You could tell 99% of the shit Mohammad makes up most of the shit on the spot.

Christians have so many branches you can use loopholes. The bible isn't as strict as the koran.

Well I was thinking specifically of subplots and POVs in this chapter. But either way, this chapter, is way too busy with the Hijack A plot, the Max's meeting B plot, the Zarai C plot, and etc. It's making the already glacial pace even slower having all these events happen at the same time.

At least the Ghost train plot completely ignored Ed and Isaac's dealings to focus on everything else. This chapter has everyone doing things and its so slow now.

Being gay is a pretty big no-no, but being an apostate is on Mo's list of Capital Crimes.

Many Muslims are okay with looking the other way for secret gay behavior, even in more conservative countries like Turkey.

It's dumb how people get attacked when they present crossdressing in a joking manner

Thing is, the line would be very easy to fix. We know this character is very secretive and puts on faces and hides things, she's for sure not out of the closet. If the spirit had said "I know you're gay, try to keep your composure", it would have shifted the emphasis, and read like "I already know you're a homo, buddy, you don't need to worry about hiding it from me by pretending you're worried about other shit, relax".

With that "but", though, yeah, it's a bad line. The best you could interpret it is that the spirit itself has one of those old-fashioned trying to be tolerant but failing attitudes.

It's kind of hard to do that when it's your state religion that 99% of the population follows (+/- 1% error of margin, it's hard to count mangled bodies of infidels)

In context, the character probably isn't really a muslim any more in the religious sense, she's just pretending to be to her family and normal people. The whole theme of hiding things from people seems to be recurring with her.

There are tons of people who pretend to be religious for social reasons but aren't really, you know?

the comic takes place in america though, not Turkey or Britain, she's an adult she can just leave

That might just cut this whole discussion down but if that's the case, he's fucked for baiting people with "progressiveness".

So it is just trendy

The overarching Cousinhood setup as well as whatever the fuck BottleWar is planning, Max's whole spirit thing, whatever the bug that saved him on the train was, there's a lot of plot threads that've been established. Which is why this pacing is torturous. Zack CLEARLY has ideas he wants to tell but he's so wrapped up pandering with goofy faces and jumping around characters the pacing has become glacial.
Star Wars Episode 1 has the climax following 4 separate but somewhat intertwined conflicts. Right now we're shifting between:
>Spy Group Angus Bravo: Ed watching Starchman, about to be jumped Johnny and his gang
>Spy Group 'Bellender': Isabel and Spender watching Miss I Don't Care
>Spy Group Forecast-is-Angst: Isaac tracking Garcia who looks supsicious
>Recon Group Magnus Maximus: Max's secret meeting with Lisa, while being bugged by Suzy AND tailed by the Student Council
>potentially D4C: Dirty Dmitri's Ditchin' Dat Chick (Dmitri leaves for lunch, which is erroneously suspicious considering what he heard and what we already basically know)
>Operation: Clamdive: Mina and Day's date, in progress

Note that the top 4 are following the same suspect: Hijack, who is trying to get into the principal's office. This chapter is kind of a mess.

If you hold genuine conviction that a religion is true, changing just because you want to isn't really a thing you can do

Eh, if she's not a muslim religiously she still counts ethnically. Muslim counts as a race now, at least for tumblr progressiveness purposes.

Right and this is why Africa and the Middle East are pleading for Americans to stop bringing it up because terrorists are real life Cred Forums and murder people "for the lolz"

Hey Abu Jihad, what's on the news today?

Someone on the Fox condemns our homophobic actions.

You know what we have to do? Which bar should we hit?

The one downtown where I met that cute steel worker with the buns as hard as Mohammed's biceps.

Yes and? You know Zack does this seem uncharacteristic of him?

if you had genuine conviction that a religion was true you wouldn't commit cardinal sins (don't know muslim equivalent) like being gay

Where does this sketchy Victorian/Edwardian -esque macabre fantasy art style come from? Was Gorey the pioneer for this, or was he drawing from an earlier inspiration? Either way, it's extended way outside of his works at this point and I wonder where this shit got started.

It was a bad idea to split up the Hijack search into 3 groups AND follow Max's clandestine meeting, but to throw in the date on top of that is just going to add months to this chapter's total length.

Easy enough to say, but again all Christians/Muslims so on commit sins against their religion. It's not as simple as just never doing bad things.

Gorey based his art style on Victorian/Edwardian etchings, and combined them figure drawing that comes from earlier comicstrips and commercial illustration.

If she becomes an apostate to get her grind on with a clear conscience, that would be when the threats would come.

victorian and renaissance woodcuts

also demons