Paranatural

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The Paranatural Activity Club.

Paranatural is a weird, humorous Web Comic made by Zack Morrison a.k.a. Midnighttelevision.

It stars a nervous young lad named Maxwell Puckett who just moved into a town called Mayview with his eccentric father and little sister Zoey. It soon turns out that the town is haunted by ghosts and other supernatural creatures, which only a handful of people, Max included, can see. The comic derives a lot of humor from over the top facial expressions, making mundane actions seem more awesome than they should be, and the fact that almost everyone in Mayview is crazy in one way or another.

After a hectic first day of school, Max finds himself joining the Paranatural Activity Club, whose purpose is to keep paranormal activity around the school in check, and to help young spectrals like Max understand and control their powers. Mostly they just mess around though.

The comic's homepage can be found here, and the first page here.

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Tropes used in Paranatural include:

• Academy of Adventure: Mysterious clubs: check. Weird teachers: check. Paranormal activity that'd detonate a PKE meter: check.
• Adult Child: Max's father.
• Alt Text: Shows up on most pages, but not all.
• Animesque
• Art Evolution: After about ten strips, the art becomes fully coloured.
• Awesome McCoolname: Mr Starchman seems to think this of Max. Of course, he's completely and utterly insane, so it's not really worth much...
• Badass Abnormal: Implied with Isaac, who can see ghosts but hasn't been shown to have a tool or any other spectral powers.
• Batter Up: Max's tool.
• Blinding Bangs: Jeff.
• Blood Knight: Ed and Isabella both love fighting spirits, but Izzy loves it to a downright scary degree.

"We flipped a coin to see who'd risk going in! (creepy grin) I lost."

• Bond One-Liner: Ed in Chapter 2:

"Welp! I guess you could say he's... dead."

• Breathless Non-Sequitur: Mr. Garcia delivers one of these.
• Calling Your Attacks: And how.

Isabel's Grandpa: You can rename my techniques... after... You've improved theeem!! Isabel: Grandpa. That's exactly what renaming them does!

• Cheshire Cat Grin: PJ got it.

Max: Your grin was at least an 8.3 on the international scale of creepy.

• The Chosen One: Averted

Mr. Spender Black spectral energy?! That's.... fairly common.

• Cloudcuckoolander: Lots of kids and adults alike are a little weird, but Ed and Max's dad take the cake.
• Combining Mecha/Fusion Dance: Parodied with Johnny and pals' "friendship fusion".
• Cool Train: The Ghost Train.
• Deadpan Snarker: Max of course, due to his below mentioned status as only sane man. According to him one of his super powers is "The ability to conjure an impenetrable wall of cynicism."
• Defeat Means Friendship: To an extent. Johnny seems less hostile towards Max after kicking his butt.
  • The same seems to go for Lefty.
• Expy: Max's dad is a dead ringer for Kamon Nandaba, minus the glasses.
• Extracurricular Enthusiast: Suzy, bravely straddling the line between "intrepid student journalist" and "domestic terrorist."
• Eye Scream: The whale-frog spirit can make reflections come to life. This is taken to the logical extreme through including reflections in peoples' eyes. Which causes tiny doubles of himself clawing their way out of PJ's eyes. Holy crap.

Max: You are so lucky you don't have to see this.

• The Faceless: R.J.'s face is always hidden in the shadow of his hood.
• Familiar: Symbiotic spirits.
  • Equippable Ally (most Tools)
  • Non-Human Sidekick: Eightfold, mostly seen in the shape of origami spider-frog. "The spirit in Isabel's book. Eats words, controls paper. Chirpy. Objectively the cutest character in Paranatural."
• Fantastic Racism: The whale-frog spirit apparently finds ghost-powered humans abominable.
• Flat What: Max, when a giant snake(-ish?) spirit suddenly interrupts his fight with the frog-whale.
• Friendly Enemy: Johnny and Max have something like this going on.
• Genki Girl: Suzy. Comes complete with bipolar mood swings and taking her work for the school news paper very seriously.
• Genre Savvy: Isabel initially refuses to come to Max's house to take care of a very creepy but not yet aggressive spirit. Max accuses her of being a skeptical slasher movie cop.
• Improbable Weapon User: The "tools" used by the activity club to fight monsters include such things as paintbrushes and books.
• Invisible to Normals: Few people can see the supernatural creatures.
• Large Ham: Mr. Starchman - announces his presence, throws gold stars and promises fabulous prizes. At least he's enthusiastic.
  • The Whale-Frog spirit loses its damn mind when it finds out Max is a spectral.
• Little Miss Snarker
• Magic Mirror: The Whale-Frog spirit can create these at will, summoning crude copies of itself or others from any reflective surface. It uses these copies for offense or nutrition.
• Missing Mom: Max's mother.
• Nice Hat: Max's cap.
• Noodle Incident: Something regarding mister Garcia and a pizza.
• Oh Crap: Max has shown over the top versions of this expression a few times.
• Only Sane Man: Max.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: "Ghosts" are dead people; "spirits" were never alive and run the gamut of weirdness. All ghosts (it's as-of-yet unclear if the same applies to spirits) have a special power that is fully subject to the Superpower Lottery (one ghost can only conjure pretty glowing butterflies). Other ghost-related terminology includes "poltergeist" (a ghost that can manipulate physical objects) and "shade" (the indistinct, shadowy blobs that people see when their sixth sense is first awakened).
• Paper Master: Isabel, via Eightfold.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Ed delivers quite a nice one at chapter 2, page 21], but it shrivels in comparison to his death threat in the following page.
• Punny Name: PJ, a pajama-clad ghost living in Max's house. Although he would like you to know that his nickname was PJ before he died in his pajamas.
• Ridiculously Average Guy: According to the cast page, Cody is this. Indeed, he's one of the few named characters without any strange quirks.

A friendly kid in Max’s grade. His most abnormal trait seems to be his tolerance for his friends’ abnormality.

• Scenery Porn: The town is very pretty and bright. It's even prettier when it's dark (and crowded with ghosts).
• Sinister Scythe: One application of Ed's powers.
• The Starscream: Isaac is a cheerfully benign one towards Mr. Spender.

"I will dance on your grave, sir."

• Sunglasses at Night: Mr. Spender always wears sunglasses.
• Sword Drag: Forge walks in like this. Except with a massive hammer.
• Town with a Dark Secret: Mayview is full of crazy people and haunted by supernatural creatures.
• Webcomic Time: As of Chapter 2 Page 12, Paranatural has been running for 8 months, meanwhile only around 32 hours have actually passed within the comic itself.
• What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?: The "Super Max Speed-Changing Cool Technique", the soup can throw, and other things.
• World of Ham: And if only Spectrals.
• X Meets Y: Eerie, Indiana crossed with Codename: Kids Next Door.