Paranatural
Paranatural is a supernatural action/comedy webcomic created by Zack Morrison. The comic has been written and illustrated by Morrison since its debut in 2010, with six completed chapters and a seventh chapter currently ongoing. Set in the fictional town of Mayview, the comic follows the Activity Club, a group of middle school students who have the ability to interact with the supernatural world.
Paranatural | |
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Author(s) | Zack Morrison |
Website | paranatural |
Current status/schedule | Updates Fridays |
Launch date | June 30, 2010[1] |
Publisher(s) | Hiveworks Comics LLC |
Genre(s) | Action, comedy |
The comic began on ComicFury and Smackjeeves before later moving to its own site.[2][1][3]
Synopsis
The comic follows the adventures of Max and the Activity Club throughout their adventures. They fight ghosts and bullies, play hitball, and solve the mysteries of the town.[4]
The story is told through an omniscient third person, sometimes including guest art or mini-comics. The comic is drawn page by page in a standard panel format, including shifted panels and extraneous movements depending on the activity going on. Morrison also includes alt text on each page, with a short comment on the page.
Morrison interacts with their readers through the text underneath the pages as well as both their Twitter[5] and Tumblr[6] accounts.
Reception
Comic Book Resources has described Paranatural as "fun, action-packed and visually inventive", with "enjoyable character moments", and compared it to Dragon Ball Z.[4] PopOptiq considered it to be "brimming with wit and humor",[7] while io9 emphasized that there is "a rich story sitting behind all that humor,"[8] and recommended it as worthy of an Eisner Award.[9] The Hawkeye praised its humor, which it described as "a mix of almost self-aware snark, fun-loving parody, and downright great standalone jokes", its art, which it described as "a mix somewhere between western cartoon and anime", and its cast of characters.[10] Inverse praised its "sly use of manga-esque stylistic tropes", remarking that "its characters leap off the screen".[11]
Paranatural reached the final round of the Mix March Madness 2014 Webcomics Tournament, a single-elimination tournament between 128 contestants.[12][13]
References
- https://web.archive.org/web/20101214110204/http://paranatural.thecomicseries.com/archive
- Pellegrini, Mark (2012-11-13). "Paranatural (A Webcomic By Zack Morrison) – AiPT!". Adventures in Poor Taste.
- https://web.archive.org/web/20110531215845/http://paranatural.smackjeeves.com/comics/1033313/the-story-begins/
- Cruz, Larry (May 27, 2014). "'Paranatural': It's over 9,000 (spooks)". Comic Book Resources.
- "Zack Morrison (@paranaturalzack) | Twitter". twitter.com. Retrieved 2016-11-30.
- "HUMAN RANCH". firstnamezacklastnamemorrison.tumblr.com. Retrieved 2016-11-30.
- Rico, Elizabeth (January 11, 2015). "'Paranatural' is witty, humorous, and filled to the brim with spirits". PopOptiq.
- Davis, Lauren (April 13, 2013). "Saturday Webcomic: Being haunted isn't the weirdest thing about Paranatural's bonkers middle school". io9.
- Davis, Lauren (April 16, 2014). "51 Awesome Webcomics The Eisners Have Completely Failed To Recognize". io9.
- Doyle, Cooper (2015-12-01). "Side effects to new age media". The Hawkeye.
- Gaudette, Emily (2016-01-28). "The 9 Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Webcomics Still Running". Inverse.
- Hauman, Glenn (2014-04-14). "The Winner(s) of the 2014 Mix March Madness Webcomics Tournament Are…". Comic Mix.
- Hauman, Glenn (2014-03-11). "Announcing the Mix March Madness 2014 Seeding Round!". Comic Mix.