Insolent Children Punch Ghosts Real Hard: Paranatural

Spoiler: Update

time for a parting kiss, and a parting told you so

 

Spoiler: Update

gibby up

But also, oh boy, the color scheme is doing wonders for putting an ominous spin on things that even the bright colors and lighthearted banter wasn't achieving alone. (Because it's clear by now, bright cheer in this comic doesn't exist without more going on around it)

"We can't miss this chance" has interesting implications - is the boss his mom, inaccessible because she's always at work? Is that ominously ghostly hair his mom, and is already too late?
(Is this information we could already guess at, but it's been a while and I'm sleepily not seeing the dots?)

 

Since Walker isn't swearing, Spender's "you both" refers to Mina and the character introduction text.

 

Spoiler

I really need to do a reread, but do we remember when the Incident happened? Chronologically? Because Spender's wearing the sunglasses now, but I don't know if this is before or after wearing them becomes a necessity to keep the thing inside him... inside.

 

Spoiler: Update time

*one and a half minutes of Dark Souls laughter *

 

tbh I read it as him also reminding agent walker that he's running while carrying a toddler, and thus cannot giddy up any farther, but honestly I love this as well

porque no los dos

 

ok I went back to check out agent walker's earlier appearance and

Spoiler: holy shit I need to reread this comic

lmaoo


...wait a fucking minute iS BOSS LEADER THE PINK PANTHER

 

So, I couldn't help but notice that the dialogue on the previous page didn't sound like an introduction at all.

 

Spoiler

Mina's suspicious glances are very warranted, Boss is keeping lots of secrets and telling lots of lies.

And it's all being conveyed so spookily that I can't tell how many layers of misleading us are happening.

 

From a couple different time cues, Ed should be three years old here. He looks and acts much younger. I'm 80% sure the answer is "Zack doesn't know toddlers." But part of me wonders if this is a deliberate portrayal of developmental differences or something.

 

Theory: it's just that thing that happen when you wrote a character into the script as being a baby for this scene but had to change the timeline and character ages fifty times and you didn't realize there was a couple extra years in there and the ages are wrong now but you hope no one notices

(But I did think that too ha ha he seems young)

 

I kept assuming 2ish years and shy until that time block was mentioned, so +1 to surprise at his age. There's enough intentional things that it seems plausible either way, and hard to conclude from here.

Spoiler: A little morbid? Feels like warning needed, not sure what to word it as

Hell, my first theory was "maybe the captivity is mental/spiritual and she's physically comatose and was since pregnancy," but the word reunion doesn't quite match with that.

But the emphasis on getting Ed to meet his mom, being at least 3 makes sense. I remember one or two things from that age, solely because I made a point of remembering them as I grew up, so they're memories of memories(etc etc). Younger than that, not so much. This would've been the first chance to get him even a possibility of recalling anything of her.

 

Maybe so, but I had assumed that this was just the first, and maybe last, chance to make any contact at all, and his age didn't really factor into the decision much.

 

Mina rushing in for what plot dump she can get while the adults are busy, I appreciate how long she's been this committed to hoarding info.

 

Teeth.

Spoiler

There's a lot more going on, between Mina's very specific spin on not doing things alone (isolating herself from the people involved, creating assistants instead), the way the doc fadesinto a sort of passivity, and oh yes, teeth. Dangers of meeting in dreams, or is the boss genuinely that made of whirling body horror?

 

oh this is relevant to my interests *cough*

Spoiler

Honestly I'm not sure if "genuinely" is a useful metric when it comes to Boss Leader.

I'm wondering if the wight in some way mimics people around it or who interact with it, since in the Spender Trauma Panel it seems to be shaped a lot like Mom Burger, but after Boss Leader hit it with an eyes-and-teeth nightmare beam and grew extra arms, it turned into a toothy body horror monster with a bunch of extra hands and was shedding white spirit energy last page.

 

Spoiler: Fwush.

And it looks like either we're about to find out, or boss is picking a bad time for a fakeout

 

Spoiler

Fuck you

Also, PENNY PENNY PENNY PENNY PENNY

 

So, wrt today's update, I guess you could say that...

Spoiler

Mr. Sandman really did bring her a dream

 

Spoiler

SPENDER'S EYES SPENDER'S EYES SPENDER'S EYES--