Oh man, I didn't even pay attention to Max's armbands. North and South poles.

RJ has a talent for gathering balls...
From what I can tell, this is the last time the golden switch was in the comic, so it's probably just been around off panel 'till now.

Maybe Max is standing like that because he's replacing Stephen in the ultimate hitball friendship formation >_>

Also, for someone being possessed by a fire spirit, Johnny sure got seriously burned there

Thank you for linking the pages guys, it makes reading these topics so much easier.

(Page 5.57)

Also:

AHA
THIS IS WHY STEPHEN WAS WRITTEN INTO DETENTION
PROBABLY
Whatever plan they've got requires 4 people, and with Stephen away from the game, Max has to take his place in Johnny's inner circle.  I really hope this is the case, because I've sure been wondering for a while what was up with that!

I agree that it seems that Max joining in Johnny's group is why Stephen was written out. Although I can't exactly see what purpose the formation has other than maybe to block shots from Johnny that Cody might throw? And also Isabel is getting rather violent towards Jeff, wow.

...RJ's face there will be the end of me, I swear.

I'm waiting and waiting for Johnny to start throwing like fireballs or something tbh lol. Also, I hope evil Jeff doesn't take control of Isabel. That'd be pretty bad

Ok, so... I hope that Cody won't hit Johnny with this ball. I don't want him to go to the bleachers to feel baaad, I want him to be in the game and be funny. And make something fire-related, ya know.

Isabel, woho-hooo easy theere! (just kiddin, come on, girl, blast this spirit out of Jeff, you can do it!)
I just wrote Jegg for the mistake and I just... jEGG... Egg...

And RJ's face. Their face. I just can't. (btw I'm wondering if we'll ever see them without the hoodie because I'd really want to)

Oh no RJ, you gave away the plan with your trollface D:
Time for Max to use some blocking skillz?

Though maybe it's a double distraction thing and RJ is going to hit cody with the golden switch while he's distracted by Johnny...

Looks like Isabel is tired of playing by the rules, Jeff is too dangerous to allow him to try again. Or maybe she's just gonna do something nonviolent, the comic is pretty full of twists like that.

I just spelled his name as Jess... I think it's contagious, LavenderDreamer

Jeff's "Heh heh.  Careful." in the final panel makes me wonder--is it a statement that such violence isn't allowed in school and whats-her-nose is nearby, or is it more of a warning that whatever's possessing Jeff can jump to people that are depressed/angry, like Isabel's becoming? I mean, that hasn't been confirmed, but in some topic somewhere we were thinking it.

I think it's more along the lines of the threat he made to the VP, like "you don't want to hurt this poor innocent boy to get to me do you?". It didn't work at all on the VP but Isabel may be more susceptible...

Though this sorta makes me wonder, since the spirit seemed to assume the VP knew Jeff is being controlled. And after he said it, she reacted like she realized something.

I might've noticed something else.

In page 5.49, the thing controlling Jeff refers to Isabel as "the Guerra child". I see two possibilities from this:

1) If the thing controlling Jeff DOES have access to Jeff's memories, it would explain knowing her name. But if so, why didn't it know anything about the VP? Everyone else was all "OH NO THAT POOR KID" but he seemed to see right through it and was unfazed, yet still didn't seem to know much about the VP.
2) If the thing controlling Jeff DOESN'T have access to Jeff's memories, then it knowing who the Guerras are just became a whole lot more important to the plot. But if so, how did Jeff know to yell for Cody?

I'm thinking it's probably situation #1, but I didn't want to immediately discount the possibility of situation #2.

Could be it knows her name from having it announced at the start of the game.

Also, some time passed between the possession and Gym CLass, at least 2 periods, so it may have gotten to know about the friendship between Jeff and Cody. Though I guess it is possible the spirit does get Jeff's memories, since how else would it know to mention Star Wars when Cody felt something was wrong with Jeff.

As for the VP: maybe she is a medium to a spirit that can make people believe the disguise is real, but spirits are unaffected :0
This would also explain her bizarre anatomy >_>

Or everyone is just really dedicated to pretending not to notice...

Ok, here's the new page! 5.59

What I can say is... SUZY. yes. It's amazing.

Also, wow, we know something more. Still not much but much more. (hehheh)

Ollie, noooo don't do it! (welp, Ollie is out probably)

And Max is just posing there.

Hi, Jack!


Sorry, somebody had to do it.
Also, OLLIE CATCH THE BALL C'MON YOU CAN DO IT!


I have one more theory: VP is a medium. Her weird, inhuman nose is a result of her possession. But mostly I say this because even for the way Zack writes, it's a bit of a stretch to think that gym class would be fooled by a big camouflage blanket. Maybe she was actually using some supernatural illusion power!

Reasons to love the latest update:
1. Suzy being freaking incredible as always.
2. Incredibly dynamic panels (like wow)
3. DOUBLE PAGE LENGTH HITBALL HYPE
4. Dragon-Ball-Z Protagonist's introduction as potential favorite side character ("Rising Revengeance" is absolute gold)

The question now is what exactly will Cody do now that Jeff is out? Or what will Max, Johnny, and RJ do? The dangerous part of the game is practically over. Maybe Coach Oop will take the time to conveniently intervene after receiving a rude awakening from Violet. Maybe this means we could easily move to the next part of this chapter and get out of this hitball arc. How long has it been? 35 pages?

Lincide wrote:

Maybe this means we could easily move to the next part of this chapter and get out of this hitball arc. How long has it been? 35 pages?

While it's been cool, this arc seems like the most...unbelievable part of Paranatural thus far.  The whole theatrical concept of "Suspension of Disbelief" is when you're like "Ok, this isn't real, but it's sci-fi or it's fantasy and as long as I pretend it all works then this story is awesome."  It goes hand-in-hand with one of my favorite quotes--the thing about science fiction is that it has to make sense.  (I think that's a play off of an old Mark Twain quote but same difference really.)

My point is, all of this is happening within the confines of a hitball game.  Dmitrii could have just been like "yo there is some weird stuff going on, I'm not leaving the game, screw that" but he didn't.  All their wacky planball strategies are in the name of staying in line with a sports rulebook.  What is taking Jeff out of the game really going to accomplish?  Is Hijack just going to be like "Well darn I've been hit, my plan is utterly foiled, guess I should just give up because I've been hit by a foam ball even though multiple people know I'm not really Jeff"?  My suspension of disbelief is getting shattered here.

Sorry for the rant, but my point is that spirits and spectrals seem far more believable than the current arc, and since Paranatural is pretty much my favorite webcomic right now, it makes me sad despite how awesome it all is.

Cody let his eye off the Golden Snitch. Unless he can change direction mid-air, it's over.

More importantly, go Suzy!

Yesss! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧ go Suzy! (she must have some serious back muscles to keep that pose for so long without supporting herself with her arms)
That face after Isabel's thumbs up though XD

Westbrook, I sort of agree... Some of the parts of this arc just feel kinda too over the top. Like Cody's almost supernatural ability to effortlessly dodge everything and the whole VP thing (if it isn't actually a paranatural thing).

The planball thing I can just about accept though, because so far, the spirit seems to stick to the rules. The whole paranatural thing is still supposed to be secret so they're trying to deal with the situation in a "normal" way untill Gymclass is over and they can deal with the spirit somewhere away from people who aren't supposed to know. As mentioned here by Dimitri. If Jeff was just rampaging they probably wouldn't go through the effort to stick to the hitball rules...
I think Hijack is likely to still go along with it though, since he really doesn't seem to want Jeff to get into too much trouble...

And whatever plan they had to deal with the spirit is likely going to fail since this page seems to suggest that Hijack manages to take over one of the teachers, I think...

Oh! Now that I look at the title page again, I just noticed; While there's a whole puppeteering theme going on, the hand holding the strings is a human hand and not Hijack's hands. Though I guess that could be an artistic thing... Also there's a bar...

Also, this is sorta speculation but still kinda part of chapter 5 so hopefully still on topic:
Here Hijack mentions he's on a quest of revenge. We know that he needs to get to the Principal's Office for this. This guy in the last panel is probably there and may be the same person as this guy who is on the side of the evil spirits... Despite the fact that Hijack is actively trying to hurt someone, he does seem to have a sense of justice of sorts. So maybe he's part of Doorman and Forge's faction?

Apophyllite wrote:

The planball thing I can just about accept though, because so far, the spirit seems to stick to the rules. The whole paranatural thing is still supposed to be secret so they're trying to deal with the situation in a "normal" way untill Gymclass is over and they can deal with the spirit somewhere away from people who aren't supposed to know. As mentioned here by Dimitri. If Jeff was just rampaging they probably wouldn't go through the effort to stick to the hitball rules...
I think Hijack is likely to still go along with it though, since he really doesn't seem to want Jeff to get into too much trouble...

And whatever plan they had to deal with the spirit is likely going to fail since this page seems to suggest that Hijack manages to take over one of the teachers, I think...

Good point; that one Dmitrii panel is basically the entire counter-point now that I read it once again, haha.  The tipping point for me is that practically everyone has seen the giant dent in the bleachers--Johnny even commented on it with respect to Dmitrii and whats-her-name ran off to get Oop while others stared on in shock--but that's not enough for anyone to abandon the game.  Oh well!

Apophyllite wrote:

Oh! Now that I look at the title page again, I just noticed; While there's a whole puppeteering theme going on, the hand holding the strings is a human hand and not Hijack's hands. Though I guess that could be an artistic thing... Also there's a bar...

I've actually been wondering about that myself, and considered starting a thread where we could discuss the title page artworks and how they relate(d) to the chapter.  I mean in hindsight, that's obviously Dmitrii's hand on the right (although...we haven't actually seen him emit orange spectral energy yet, right?)  I'm very interested in what the implied bar scene is going to be like.

The game must go on

Though I agree that's an absurd amount of dedication to a hitball game to continue playing after someone tried to kill someone else by throwing a ball way too hard... Twice...

A title page thread would be cool :0

I think we need to remember that this chapter is difficult to follow mostly because we're reading an action scene very slowly. More specifically, we are often seeing what goes through a character's head (or multiple characters' conversations) over the course of a whole page, yet in the grand scheme of things that whole page might only span a few seconds. Case in point: this page where Cody is about to be hit by the ball and the flattened ball, and he barely has time to realize what was thrown at him before it's too late.
EDIT: Also of note are pages where Max talks with Suzy, or 2 or 3 where Ed talks to his spirit (which is happening super fast anyway) and a lot of random junk. I am editing my post as I re-read the chapter because it's FUN.
EDIT EDIT: Best line in Chapter 5 is "That isn't Max anymore"

The kids are dedicated to their hitball plan mostly because it's a spur of the moment kind of thing, and hell, no one is perfect. They may soon realize it would have been smarter to forget about playing Hitball and just stop Jeff/Hijack even if by breaking rules THEY get in trouble instead, because Hijack probably has a backup plan even though he was tagged out.

P.S. I think it's neat that Hijack still has some amount of sympathy for Jeff in spite of using Jeff as his convenient vessel of revenge. Weird and creepy, but still interesting.
P.P.S: We're at 32 pages of Hitball if you count this as the first page.

All that vein bulging can't be healthy, Jeff. You should probably get that checked out...

"Hey you Literal 15-Year Old, that arm you drew looks weird because you're a beginner, here's some anatomy tips."

new best line unofficially in chapter 5 (technically going to be in extras) :L

Seriously I like Zack's weird manga PSA it's just so true. Art teachers god damnit.

Personally I don't think Hijack is that much of a bad guy (or spirit). I think he hates bullies and defends the victims in some twisted way.
... But he's my fav so

Chapter 5 - Page 67

Best part: