I know its already been pretty well established that the mystery fourth member was black or at least dark-skinned but i just found a new piece of evidence and felt like sharing.
the characters arm appears in the last panel of this comic http://www.paranatural.net/comic/chapter-4-page-96 during Isabelle's crude flash back.

And the fact that that person is the only one who doesn't have a comment for Isabelle's cool new tool was either Zack just keeping his easter egg inconspicuous

OR

it reflects Dmitri's laid back personality.  

Thoughts?

Wow I didn't spot that one, that means Black Kid is on two pages. Now that I think about it he might not hang with the AC because while he knows about spirits and ghosts, perhaps he doesn't want to fight spirits? That seems reasonable...

Wait. In "Who knoooows" there are 4 "o"s in "knoooows", but only one in "Who". 4 minus 1 equals 3, Triangles have 3 sides, HALF LIFE 3 ILLUMINATI CONSPIRACY CONFIRMED

I've only just seen this thread because it's been bumped, but I really like the theory!  Especially in the latest page, it seems like Dimitri is more "hmm what's going over hereeee" instead of outright shocked like everyone else.

Apparently he is always like that, he's the quiet type. You gotta watch out for the quiet ones.
What's most convincing to me is how much focus he was given even when we know almost nothing about him except that he is with the Journalism Club.

Connorses wrote:

Apparently he is always like that, he's the quiet type. You gotta watch out for the quiet ones.
What's most convincing to me is how much focus he was given even when we know almost nothing about him except that he is with the Journalism Club.

I agree.

Actually, come to think of it...

This page (#225) has always bothered me.  The last three panels seem...a lot different than the things Morrison usually writes.  The whole thing about Colin's cat feels like it was thrown in (and ONLY thrown in) to disguise Dimitri's response.  I mean Zach writes things that are nonsensical and silly because they just fit his style, but even when I was a new reader, the whole ending to this page didn't make sense to me, like it was so pointless it just had to be hiding something big.

It's good to see I'm not the only one who thinks Dimitri is spying on Suzy

I've already said this in the chapter discussion topic but since it's relevant here I thought I'd post it here too (and add a bit):

This page (chapter 5 page 52) offers up a whole different side of Dimitri that we haven't seen before. And then there's him saying "Authority that lacks talent doesn't deserve blind compliance". If the theory that he used to be in the activity club is true (which is starting to seem more and more likely (though still seems odd Suzie wouldn't know)) this could point to why he would've left. He might not have been too pleased with having Spender as the person in charge. He also seems the strategising type who wouldn't mind putting others in danger to get stuff done, so that might have rubbed the others the wrong way as well... And maybe caused an incident...
Though I guess Isabel and Ed don't seem like they would mind jumping in a fight head first to be the distraction... There was hinting at Isaac maybe having done some harm though (I think) so that could also have been a factor in Dimitri choosing to leave, but since he seems like a smart dude, even if he left the club for his own reasons he would probably still want to keep an eye on Suzy anyway...

I keep repeating it, but there's definitely something disturbing about how the kids in the Activity Club so quickly resort to violence to deal with rogue spirits, specifically how much they ENJOY it. They have not learned to show much humility, or restraint. It's a total cliché but "with great power comes great responsibility". But even worse, Spender is not great at teaching on the fly and he seems forgetful at times.

But the main reason it bothers me that they engage in so much violence is that there are spirits who are extremely prejudiced against spectrals, and the Activity Club is only reinforcing this bad image.

Anyways, this is a good page to exemplify the utter confusion and lack of control present in Da Club:
http://www.paranatural.net/comic/chapter-2-page-29
on the other hand she may have been sarcastic when she was threatening PJ. :/ But anyway, basically all of Chapter 2 when they fought the whale spirit was where I got this idea that something was wrong.

EDIT: omg that's Eightfold's cool paper power... The feels...
THE FEELS ALL OVER AGAIN...

I think Isaac mentioned how Isabel and Ed only really care about the fighting aspects of being a spectral and it's probably an attitude they get from Isabel's grandfather who seems to dislike or at least distrust spirits...
So far though I think they've only attacked spirits who are a threat to them or ghosts.

There definitely is something about the whole spectral/spirit thing going on in the world at large. I can imagine a lot of spectrals see spirits as lesser things and literally tools to use how they see fit. They would possibly see spirits who pose a threat more like dangerous animals that need to be put down than actual sentient beings that could maybe be reasoned with. And with spirits sometimes having some pretty impressive and dangerous powers it could seem prudent to weaken them enough so they'd be stuck in a tool and almost forced to accept a bond with a spectral.
There appear to be many different factions of spirits and spectrals who all have different views on these matters...

Though the threat of killing PJ seemed more like a joke suggestion to me since she doesn't seem too bothered with ghosts... Part of the activity club's activities even seems to protect the ghosts in the school against spirits who eat them...

Could be possible Dimitri didn't agree with how the activity club handles things and left for that reason...

Apophyllite wrote:

Could be possible Dimitri didn't agree with how the activity club handles things and left for that reason...

Yeahhhh, that's pretty much what I was getting at. And there do seem to be factions of spirits, which it will be interesting to see more of.

It's also odd to think that Doorman and Forge would be allies since Forge seemed like a perfect candidate for The Bad Guy when we met him. He's just so angry and reckless. But him and Doorman are the same color so there's that. Forge doesn't seem to be allied with the black dog/cat swearing creatures though. It's confusing.

This is a bit off topic but I don't think Forge seemed like a Bad Guy. Good Guys can be angry and reckless too. From the conversation Forge had with Spender, it seems Forge used to be the kind that would do anything for the greater good, even if it meant doing some pretty bad stuff and sacrifising innocent people to reach his goal.
Now he seems to really regret it and thinks of himself as a bad guy eventhough he still seems to be striving toward doing good. And because he doesn't trust his own judgement on what's good, he's looking to put himself into the service of this supposedly pure good being.
I think the fact that it was mentioned the dog/cat creatures (was it pixelhounds?) only obey truly evil beings and he didn't manage to get them to obey eventhough he thinks of himself as evil in some way, was supposed to show that he was in fact not evil.

Also seems like Forge has been in Mayview before (chapter 5 page 15) and he and Doorman seem to have known eachother for a really long time. Though I don't know what you mean by same colour? Doorman's energy is red and Forge's is grey. And the pixelhounds had pretty much every colour so I don't think factions are based on that...

To get things back on topic a bit: Going by the chapter title page, it seems like Dimitri has orange spectral energy... Also he doesn't seem to have a specific item he's always carrying around (unless maybe it's really tiny and hidden from view) so he possibly doesn't have a tool... He could be morally opposed to having a tool and using a spirit as a weapon...

the latest page definately bumps the theory but all in all that was a very confusing page to read. what did he even do exactly?

Something to protect his hand and/or redirect the ball. something MAAAAGIC *o*

I'm pretty confident on my rope spirit theory. The sound effect to me indicated the whirring sound of rope being spun around something really fast like a reel or pulley wheel. The spinning rope would also explain the cut on the hitball in the second to last panel, the rough surface of the rope and a high enough speed could let it act as a weak chainsaw cutting things(like the ball) when it touches it.

Looks kinda like vibrations to me... I don't think rope would've helped much in that situation.

The ridges on Dmitri's hands wouldn't be explained by vibrations though. Sure you can say it is a motion blur but that's a really weird motion blur for a vibration. The rope would protect Dmitri's hand while the spinning motion would help deflect it. Not perfect physics but reasonable artistic license , also ghost powers. I mean Ed uses Ink like it is a solid object so spirits can do things with their powers that aren't always completely reasonable. It seems to hinge on a "Does it look like it could work? Then it works!" policy.

It could be rope I guess. Brief and vague artistic representation of unknown mystical powers can be hard to decipher and interpretations are often pretty subjective. To me it looks a lot more like an artsy way to depict vibration than rope but I could be wrong about that. Wouldn't be the first time I misinterpret stuff shown in the comic...

I could be just as wrong. We have one panel of him using it, not exactly conviction worthy evidence.

But at least in this thread I want to be the first to call "Dmitri has rope powers!"

Because being a special snowflake is important to me.

a rope ghost/spirit would be odd. maybe a snake would be better? ooooooo. or purrhaps a drill?
i still think he is less possessed then just a spectral tbh.

Something papery I think? His feet and legs look really 2d. I'm leaning more to the medium side of things, given the fact that he himself is being manipulated by whatever power he has, instead of something else being manipulated through an object

Why not a rope-snake? Spirits tend to be odd, Eightfold was a paper origami spiderlike entity...

Him being a medium does seem most likely. Every spectral with a tool we've seen so far tends to use their power only through wielding their tool, except maybe Spender... He doesn't seem to have any weird body transformation things going on like Isaac. Though I guess depending on how long he's been a medium and on how powerfull his spirit is (affecting its recovery speed), it might just not be visible yet.
Also, spectral energy can't interact with normal objects so he would need to have a spirit's power to have been able to deflect that ball.
At least, as far as we know with the rules about spectrals and spectral energy introduced so far... Could always be that there's other stuff we haven't seen yet like exceptions or other pranatural stuff.

I think the bendiness of his legs in that panel is probably an artistic thing to indicate movement. Blocking the ball moves him back significantly. And I don't think there'd be two paper themed powers. While it'd be kinda cool to see the differences in how you can use a power based on the same material to do vastly different things, I think it'd be more likely that there'll be more focus on variety of powers...

I agreee. A repeat power is highly unlikely even with eightfold gone.

Has anyone brought up the "terrible thing" that Isaac did? Isabel never named names and her, Ed and Mr. Spender don't seem to really care too much about it, what if the "terrible thing" was done to Dmitri and forced him to leave the Activity Club?