Just as a heads up this thread talks about the entirety of the comic up to Chapter 5 Page 98. So, unmarked spoils.

So, as we see in Max's dream in Chapter 4, his mother was a metalworker. Max's powers involve drawing metal to his bat, and if Scrapdragon's flipout in the same chapter is any indication, some repulsion will develop as well.
In the same chapter, Johnny is possessed by the Fire Spirit Forge, which makes him capable of melting metal, if not being able to handle it due to its heat. In Chapter 5, we see that Johnny is starting to see Shades, and his debt to Max leads to the natural conclusion that eventually he will join the Activity Club via invite by Max. These two characters are thematically consistent, and it's starting to poke at me that perhaps the chain of new spirits will expand to not just include Johnny. Methinks that other characters such as Suzy might get wrapped up in the supernatural as well, and if so, my personal theory that I'm going to posit forth now is that they're all going to have to do with metal.

My theory's natural conclusion is that once the chain of spectrals is complete, Max, Johnny, and a couple other kids will have a total power set that allows them to do exactly what Max's mom did, find, melt/smelt, bend, and make objects out of metal. Which is interesting, because that seems silly for fighting spirits. I mean, the one thing they're immune to (with the exception of poltergeists) is physical objects.

What are your thoughts on this theory that Max and Johnny are two parts of a multi-part metalworking set, and how do you think the comic will develop in the future?

The narrative does seem to trend towards power combos that make topical sense but aren't very combat effective... Like Isabel and Ed having paper and ink. And maybe now Isaac's weather powers and Isabel having an umbrella (though we don't really know what kind of powers she'd get from that).

I doubt the combo would go further than Max and Johnny though. Building an entire new team around the metal theme would kinda break up the already existing club, since I doubt it'd make sense for everyone to lose their current spirits and get metal themed replacements... Unless of course the story goes in the direction of having Max split from the club entirely and going it on his own for reasons. Johnny would most definitely not play well with the rest of the activity club (except maybe some grudging respect towards Isabel) and now I'm wondering how Johnny is going to deal with the whole "needs to be a secret" thing, since I doubt he'd want to keep his friends in the dark even on this...

There'd probably be some way to make the metal thing combat effective by some spirit power that can make metal imbued with spectral energy so that it'd be both physical and spectral, like Eightfolds paper... Maybe Forge can already do that... Like, with his armor and stuff... There do seem to be spirits made out of spectral metal, like the Ghost Train.

Now that I think about it, it's entirely possible that the activity club is doomed to fall apart. There's some obvious tensions between all the members and while it's been mostly theorized that Max would act as the glue that would keep them all together, it could be that the opposite thing happens and he's the one to drive them to the breaking point. Spender's definitely not helping... Though I guess agent Day being there might be enough to keep them forced into a united front long enough to resolve their issues...

Man, there's so much going on, it's hard to tell where it's all going...

^Oh, the club splitting apart is an angle I hadn't even considered. It's obvious it's fractured apart before, especially with the comments Isaac and Isabel make about fledgling spectrals in Chapter 1. Plus the theory (which I totally believe) about Dmitri being a former member. You get the points to-day.

I'll admit that most of the reasoning behind the "Multi-man team" bit IS the need to be able to strike at spirits. Plus, Max has Black energy, and Johnny was possessed by Forge, who has Grey. So we're short a "white".

I think it is pretty likely that the activity club will go through a lot of tension in the near future. I'm not sure if they'll make it through it one piece though. Johnny is definitely going to be interacting with the club, maybe on a namedrop level, maybe not. Though I'm not entirely certain what his effect will be on the club's togetherness. If you had asked me earlier in the comic, I would say that he would only cause chaos but now... I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that maybe johnny will help to hold the club together, or at least that he'll be a valuable contributor to it. I never considered max and Johnny's powers to be related, though it is a possibility. I think that the power thing is a lot more complicated than we might first think. How does Riddlesand Wordgames (the spirit which spoke through Max when taking to Doorman) play into this? They're probably a second spirit of Max's, since Scrapdragon is a grudge, and those spirits are usually bestial and incoherent, though when I think about it that reflection frog went grudge (I think) and he could still talk. But I still don't think they're the same spirit because Riddlesand Wordgames'name implies that they are accept at manipulating words, so they probably wouldn't have metal powers. Where was I going with this again...? Oh, right.

Tldr; I think the spectral abilities of Max and Johnny are unrelated, and that the powers and their relationships are much more complicated than we think.

^With regards to the spirit which talks through Max in Chapter 3, my personal headcanon is that that is ALSO ScrapDragon, which is faking Grudgeness around Boss Leader and Max. My only real evidence is the two-tailed speech bubble, which meshes with Scrapdragon's weird split face.

Johnny doesn't like Max's friends, even if Chapter 5 has pushed him far further into the category of liking Max. I mean, RJ was getting out a bat in page 98. They intend to beat up Ed.

The name the old comment section came up with for the hypothetical second spirit of Max's is "BERG", or Broken Evil Riddle God, which is a summary of all the things Doorman calls maybe-not-Scrapdragon.

I do firmly believe that at least one more member of the Activity Club will arise, possibly with white spectral energy.

I am going to disprove counter respond to some of your evidence claims now.

1)I think that it is highly likely that the two-tailed speech bubble represented both Max's voice and Riddle's voice speaking at the same time.

2)I'm fairly positive that RJ's bat was for smacking Johnny while he was swinging on the rope, and not specifically for roughing up Ed. You can see him in the background of some of those panels.

3)I still like Riddle's canon name, though since it's too long I'm gonna just call him/her/it Riddle.

#)Another reason I don't think Scrapdragon is the same spirit as Riddle is because Riddle's name doesn't match with Max's metal powers, (like I might've mentioned somewhere before) while Scrapdragon's scrapland does.

P.S. Irrelevant detail: for some reason, I imagined Riddle's voice as being female.

Well, actually:

1. Hey now, that's speculation. The two-tailed speech bubble is an aesthetic thing, but I would assume it can be used as a trait of identifying the BERG spirit.

2. That's what the bat was for, but it's not "out" while RJ is climbing over Coach Oop, and so one can assume that RJ is taking it out again in that panel.

3. I like BERG because there isn't a canonical name, and BERG is shorter and funnier to say.
(did you try to type a capital 4?)
4. Again, no canonical name, and I'm the Junkyard was confirmed in one of Zack's tweets to be Max's Headspace.

this is a little off topic, though.

Ah. You have some very valid points there.

Also the # was there because I didn't really think it should be 4 but I felt it should still be on the list. But yeah this was just a bit of off-topic speculation, huh? Sorry 'bout that!

Looking at the page with the dual-tailed speech bubble, I think it's more likely that it represents Max talking at the same time as the spooky spirit voice... however "Max" does say "I didn't end up with the sense of humour", which sounds to me like there was at one point a spirit that got split in half- into a bestial form (The grudge snake) and Riddle (words).

Adding to that the Snake's bisected (trisected? He also has a mouth segment, and I think on the ghost train he quadsected himself...) face, it makes sense there would be two spirits inside Max.

Mr. Spender's reaction to Max's power being black makes me think Mr. Spender meant "fairly common" as in that's the colour of his shadow spirit, which to me would mean Max is both a medium and a spectral...?

I'm not entirely sure where this thought was going, just loose thoughts flying around that I thought I would try and make into coherent speculation.

TLDR- I think there are two spirits (Beast and Intellect- that would make the magnet powers make sense, as opposites attract) and Max is part of the same deal as Mr. Spender, being both Spectral and Medium.

The "Oposites Attract" angle is a play on words I hadn't considered about the relation between Berg and Scrapdragon. It does make a fair bit of sense that the two would have some greater storytelling elements behind them than "just happening to inhabit the same spectral"- though, design choice doesn't necessarily have to influence the plot. I'm probably wording this poorly, let me give that another go-

I hadn't considered the archetypal frames that could give speculative insight to the relation between those spirits, which feels appropriate considering that 'opposites attract' has been a theme between the other spectral/spirit pairs so far. That it would also apply to two spirits associated with the same spectral would make sense.