#paranatural agent summers

[dumpster-of-the-lost-souls]

I think I know what the sphinx of of truth meant by 

“By summer’s end, This town will be destwoyed,” Sphinx of truth Paranatural chapter 6 page 44 panel 7.

I am interpreting the Truth the Sphinx spoke as “summer” referring to agent Summer AKA June Puckett. In that specific context the truth means by however June Puckett died the town will be destroyed in a similar manner or it will be at the hands of whatever or whoever killed her.

All that I am aware of about June’s death is that it is implied to have been grisly.

What that means I have no idea. 

[jonahmagnus]

Paranatural is great because becoming obsessed with the woman who haunts the narrative is really, really easy

[dafukdidiwatch]

Paranatural 41

<read like Brennan Lee Mulligan>

HELLLLLLO ONE AND ALL! Wecomebacktoanother thrilling episode of Dimension Twenty:

I'm your humble dungeon master Brennan Lee Mulligan. With me as always are our Ghoulie Schoolies! Say Hi Ghoulie Schoolies!

"HI GHOULIE SCHOOLIES!"

Last! We! Left! Off! Long in the past Ricky aka Richard Spender had taken Isabel and his friends to Camp Lakeside where during the night they faced off against Jeane's former mentor Shrike, now Werewolf of ultimate power. After just blasting through it with a train, the Werewolf was sent to some other part of the country team rocket style, and Ricky and Isabel had a lovely heart to heart, while Mina broke his heart by leaving town the next day, determined to fight the ultimate spirit in her own way.

Many Years Later and we see Spender picking up Issac, a young boy with newly developed storm abilities after the dramatic defeat of King Catnine. This eventually lead to the reveal of why Dimitri left and Boss Leader not being the mortal she says she is.

We cut back to the present dinner between Richard and Day where even more secrets were reveals. That Agent June Summers, Richard and Day's Mentor, was actually June Puckett! AKA Max's Mom!

<Cheers in the background> "Following in Mom's footsteps"

Ah yes the family legacy.

Max's Player: "Does this mean I'm going to die?"

<sputtering wheeze laugh> Well there's only one way to find out.

Let us begin with...Chapter 8!

[umbraastaff]

Um. Uh. TAZ: Balance + Paranatural AU. Gotta do it. Gotta have it.

Lucretia as Boss Leader! Don't even know her entire deal yet, but this has gotta be a thing, right. Leading a secret organization that characters can be made to forget about, taking everything on her shoulders, wanting to do the right thing but not necessarily agreeing with others on how to go about it...

Lup's probably in the Agent Summers position, or, since we don't know how that storyline's going to resolve exactly, she might be a more active ghost. (Or spirit? Don't think they overlap, but if there's any way a ghost can become a spirit, then she's probably hanging out in an umbrella tool. It's slowly getting cool flame patterns.)

Barry's either in a Spender position (Contains The Horrors) or he's a monster (are any Mayview vampires, like, chill? I guess they gotta follow their sire's orders. Maybe a werewolf, then, or something else. Might also be a ghost/spirit for matchsies with Lup.)

Alternately, Merle unknowingly contains the Horrors, and John is the Horrors.

THB are probably in a similar "some have a foot in the dream organization, some are trying to figure it out" dynamic to the Mayview Middle kids...?

Kravitz... probably a monster/ghost hunter of some sort, right. I can't remember if anyone explicitly does that in the comic, but the world for sure has room for it.

(You KNOW the Raven Queen is some ancient spirit he's following the guidance of. Maybe they occupy the Doorman-Angel corner, now that I think of it.)

[adhdaugust]

I just finished getting caught up on Paranatural after not having read it for years and I just wanna say I think its really funny that I figured out the Agent Summers = June Puckett reveal a bit before it happened just because I thought “June Summers would be a ridiculous name” and then instantly remembered all the other names we’ve been given in this comic

[clickatickaclickaticka]

hi I read the comic all in one go like two days ago and I have some Thoughts

this will be going under a read more bc it’s a little long

so first of all,

since we have canon confirmation that agent summers and june puckett are the same person, this little exchange has a new context for me beyond the loinsfruit joke. I think peter knows about spectrals and paranatural activity or suspects something’s up, either through his own explanations or because june possibly told him about it. one of his other friends could have told him as well, since as evidenced here

we can see that he knew amy chen and angél guerra, both of whom are pretty entrenched in the whole spectral business.

which leads me to this question:

does he have an ulterior motive for moving to mayview?

it’s established in the beginning of the comic that mayview is his hometown and that it’s been his dream to own a convenience store. In the same conversation with amy as above, he cracks a joke about moving to mayview so his kids can breathe fresh air before they mutate to rely on unclean city air. He has people he knows and was possibly friends with in his youth, but doesn’t seem to have sought them out.

my very loose theory is that after june’s death, peter moved back to mayview so that in the event his kids did turn out to be spectrals, they would have a (relatively) safe and tight-knit community to learn from and grow with, since june can’t teach them herself.

this theory probably has a bunch of holes that could be poked into it, the only one I can think of right now being that peter doesn’t know about the barrier. If june cut off ties to the consortium and left mayview before the barrier was erected, then it would make sense that she wouldn’t know about it and thus peter probably wouldn’t know about it.

next is uh. this

so like. there’s a zipper on that guy! it’s probably one of the consortium agents! but the question is, which one? why are they burrowed in the earth? did they come with the train?? what’s up with the red spark/slash thing on them???

I don’t believe it’s boss leader since her domain seems to only be dreams.

now that I think about it though the spirit train probably can’t make its own tunnels to travel through. this agent might’ve burrowed a tunnel in ahead of time? but then how would they have contended with the barrier? this mystery will haunt my every waking hour

also! after max falls off the front of the train, we get this panel on the right

that sure doesn’t look like magnet powers buddy. idk if he subconsciously used some spectral energy (maybe, since his aura is there, but also they show up all the time anyway) but it could also be the spirit possessing him? personally I think the spectral energy makes more sense since it dissipates when he lands, and I don’t know if it looking like his eyes are blank and vaguely glowing is a design choice or not.

I have many more thoughts and questions but I’m kinda running out of steam, so later I might make a part two of small theories and such (featuring more june speculation and an interesting parallel…)

[junk-thrillz]

I’ve tried multiple times today to write down Suzy’s name in full, but it’s like a shadow spirit is holding my fingers back every time. My desire to have an easy-to-guess, accurate method of character tagging for Paranatural posts is completely at odds with the fact that tagging ANY post as ‘Suzy Starchman’ feels like unleashing a million devils.

This isn’t a negativity post, like I’ve been genuinely delighted by everything these past few updates have thrown at us, but I’ll admit, it’s fucking WEIRD knowing Suzy’s last name. It’s so weird!! It’s so weeeeeeird!! I archive-binged the comic and joined the fandom right as Chapter 7 was starting, and on top of that I started reading as a teenager (still a teenager), so the couple years it took for Chapter 7 to wrap up felt much, much longer than it actually was. And in those years I’d gone through so many damn fic/au ideas and binged so much fan content and memorized so many fan theories and reread the comic so many times and had had such an eclectic development of my character/shipping/etc. tastes that it all felt like an eternity.

But now we’re out of Chapter 7, and because it’s not a flashback chapter, things are progressing at a normal pace again, and because of that every new reveal feels to me like a punch in the face you know is coming, but that comes way faster than expected. The thing is, Chapter 7 feeling like such a long stretch of time to me got me into the mindset that I’d be waiting for a lot of stuff for forever. Suzy’s name being this big mystery was something I’ve been thinking about since the very beginning of my reading the comic, but any sort of information being revealed about it felt infinitely far-off, like the kind of thing that would never really end up happening. Putting together the puzzle pieces of what happened between Isaac and Dimitri, getting a crapton of information revealed about Paranatural’s fundamental lore, finally getting confirmation that Max’s mom was Agent Summers... all of these things felt that way too. I wasn’t expecting to be knocked out of a fandom-only existence, where fan content remains, on some small level, stagnant*, because we simply weren’t getting a ton of information revealed to us.

My immediate reaction is, “didn’t the Angel’s-identity reveal happen too soon?” “Didn’t the reveal of Suzy’s name happen too soon?” “Didn’t Dimitri’s lie getting thrown out into the open happen too soon?” But this is how it should be. This is normal. Not everything can or should be revealed at the very end of the comic. It’s just hard for me to wrap my head around, is all. On some level, I don’t think I was able to imagine someday waking up to a new page with Violet and Lisa on it. But Chapter 8′s happening, and we’re moving forward in time, and we’re almost back at Mayview Middle...! I just don’t know how to explain to my own brain that information getting revealed is normal.

*When I say stagnant, I mean it in the sense that Paranatural’s only ever going to have so many mysteries. For the longest time, Suzy’s name was THE mystery about her! For the longest time, Suzy and Isabel’s dynamic was stand-out as being completely and utterly incomprehensibly fantastically hilariously weird. And silly. So these things come up again and again, and they never stop being fun. Every fandom’s got its own identity! Bits like the Miss-Suzy theory and Suzabel’s dynamic are wonderfully ingrained in fancontent, and have been for years. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

[paranaturalpop]

3 Things

June Puckett's mask hides her eyes (so it would hide glowing)

She's working with sparks, but wearing short sleeves. Wouldn't that burn her arms? (Unless she has a spirit that protects her from burns, like Forge)

She refers to Max in third person. Why? Who's she talking to? (Me thinks Forge, who noticed Max before her because they were in his spirit world)

[the-fandom-fool]

Boss Leader: This agent thinks the Cousinhood’s fears may at least be a useful angle to interpret one part of a laundry list of mysteries she inherited from her first mentor.

Max: And who was this mentor?

Boss Leader: Oh? ur mom lol

Max: Excuse me?????

Boss Leader: No, seriously. It was your mom.

[peregrine-falcon]

Obsessed with the new pnat page. So much explicit confirmation both for stuff that was mostly confirmed and for stuff that was still just theory

[twig---verginix]

oh also while I'm still thinking about it. Do we think that Agent Summers is Max's mom

just because. fire. and ponytail.

[pearly-sims]

PARANATURAL FANS WE’RE EATING GOOD TONIGHT

[jonahmagnus]

Speaking of which, on top of just having great characters in general, paranatural's women really shine. Like thank god, finally a story that actually gets what girls in middle school are like. Why does Suzy act like that? Because shes a lesbain in middle school. Shes genuinely the best rep of the insane nerosis and unhinged tendencies that middle school girls experience. She is not well and I have never felt so seen. Every paranatural woman is a banger. Lisa. Isabel. Agent Day. Ms Baxter. Fauxbia. Sophie. Alex. June fuckin' Summers. Penny. Phantomime. Isaac O'Connor if we wait a few years. Mina Zarei. Shirke. Amy. Paige. Youth Culture. I forgot to mention Violet because hes a trans guy to me but him too. My girls of all time. Anyways,

Common Suzabel Win!

Manga and media in general is pissing me off constantly with women being long range fighters and men being close range. This is why paranatural is the perfect piece of media because unlike every single other pussy-ass story they have the guts to have their main girl character actually punch something for a change.

[diaryofageekgirl]

Agent Summers is Max’s Mom

Okay, I’ve had this theory rattling around in my head since the early days of Chapter 7, but today’s update just solidified it for me. I 100% believe that Agent Summers is/was Max’s mom.

First of all, we know that Spender was mentored by a pyrokinetic spectral - he says so outright during his fight with Forge (ch4 p127):

And we find out in today’s update that Agent Summers was “slinging fire” in combat (ch7 p51):

Agent Summers is clearly the figure in the background of this panel, as Spender, Mina, and Garcia are the kids, Walker is the large man behind them, and the newly-introduced Shrike is the one in the eyepatch, as referenced earlier in this page. They’ve got their hair half-shaved and are wielding a flaming torch of some sort. Compare that to Mom Puckett’s appearance (ch4 p111):

She’s rocking a punk vibe, with the piercings and tattoos, so I could totally imagine her having a more outlandish hairstyle in her younger years. And she’s got two different flaming/smoking instruments on her here, the welding torch and her cigarette. For the entirety of the small amount of screen-time she’s gotten, she’s been consistently associated with fire and metal.

In an in-character Q&A on Twitter, Zach revealed that Spender had a total of four mentors during his time at the Activity Consortium (from the Paranatural wiki):

One of them is obviously Walker, and Summers is also named as one of them (regardless of whether Summers is Max’s mom, of course). I believe that the other two are the Doctors Burger, as Gwen certainly shows familiarity towards Mina and Richard (ch7 p7):

And Gwen also lists Summers alongside herself and Walker and Boss Leader (ch7 p9):

I originally assumed that the fourth was the current Boss Leader’s predecessor, but there’s been no indication in canon to suggest that that was the case. Shrike seems to have specifically been a mentor for Garcia, and in today’s update, both of Ed’s parents are referenced alongside their other mentors. which leads me to believe that Ed’s father is the fourth.

...I suppose it could also be Francisco, but he isn’t affiliated with the Consortium. Anyways!

A couple of other minutiae to cover re: Agent Summers = Mom Puckett:

1. Summers would obviously be her maiden name - assuming that she did, in fact, take the name Puckett when she married. Since we’ve never heard Mom Puckett’s first or last name in canon, maybe she never changed it?

2. From what I can tell, the Barrier wasn’t put up until Spender, Mina, and Garcia were in their late teens. She easily could’ve just left Mayview with no issue.

3. Given that Spender’s only 13 years older than Max, Mom Puckett would need to be a few years older than him for that situation to not be awful. Which, of course, would be a not-unreasonable age to be mentoring new spectrals in the Consortium.

4. Spender’s reaction to Gwen mentioning Agent Summers’ name, coupled with what little information we know about Max’s mom’s death, (ch2 p9):

(that speech bubble has been theorized by others in the fandom to represent burn scars), and also coupled with this comment from Max, (ch5 p291):

really only feel like they point in one direction. Why bring up the idea that his mom was “normal, I guess” if she actually was?

As for why she left? Maybe she just got tired of the danger and fear and wanted to be safe. Maybe she just really wanted to settle down and have a family. Maybe she was injured or otherwise shaken up by a particular encounter and decided that enough was enough. Until we get more concrete information, that part of the story is merely speculation at this point.

[happikattwuzheere]

1. HELL YEAH HELL YEAH  HELL YEAH

2. there’s been multiple mentions of an “agent summers” who spender’s got a massive chip on his shoulder about who im pretty sure is mentioned to have left 

3. ‘june summers’ is peak paranatural character naming 

4. and also excellent theming with fire powers 

5. june puckett, formerly june summers, is the connecting thread of this whole story 

[snowblzr]

UPDATE: Paranatural

New comic! Today's News:

Welcome to... an experiment! After hitting the physical and emotional barrier of wrist injury lockdowns again and again, I started thinking about ways I could keep Paranatural going with the momentum and care it deserves without whittling down my health to the point where I couldn't make it anymore. My old mini golf story doing well turned me on to illustrated prose, so I decided I wanted to try giving it a shot for main updates, with the idea that I'll break back into comic panels when I can and should. I know this is may be a scary change, but I want to try it on and see if it's sustainable. As I said on Twitter, I trust myself to make the story exciting in this format, and if it doesn't work out, I don't mind having an experiment in the archives. I hope you'll reserve full judgment for at least a little while while I stretch my wings a bit.

Now more than ever, thank you for reading!

~

[Transcript]

    "Heh... listen to me," Jean chuckled to himself. "Just gave a Shrike speech like word-for-word. Except SHE flipped her eyepatch up instead of showin' me a pretty shoulder scratch."

    Thoughts of his old mentor kept Jean from noticing how little his pep talk had buoyed Isabel. "Tough" was something she was always told she was until she wasn't... and then she was told that, too. Plus Isabel had no idea what a "Shrike speech" was, or how an eyepatch might enter its mysterious equation.

    Mina seemed to conjure up an image of what he'd described just fine, however, and had furrowed her brow ever so slightly in a deliberately dignified expression of disgust. "You don't have to flaunt your mental scars, too, Jean," she said.

    Jean let out a wry scoff. "Try and stop me. That lady was my dang hero. Cousinhood's finest. Absolutely unhinged. Rest in chaos." He raised his hand in a mock toast, then mimed pouring it on the ground, a little invisible memorial.

    So this "Shrike'' was a someone, and that someone wore an eyepatch... and had maybe passed away? Isabel was struggling to keep up. She thought she'd heard Grandpa mention a "Cousinhood" before, but not in the angry or important way that would make her retain it. All of this confusing grown-up talk was beginning to make Isabel feel small and out of place.

    Jean continued to meander through a slow wave of nostalgia. "Man, but we had a team back then. Shrike swingin' swords, Agent Summers slingin' fire... Walker and the doctors... and us three paranatural punks bringin' up the rear..." His gaze was fixed far off across the lake, out towards better times and the waning Mayview sunset.

    Spender ran a hand through his hair, which was still damp from his swim. "I don't remember facing much of what we faced at that age as a 'team.' They were certainly all in town at the time, I'll give you that." He'd made his interjection with a smile, but his voice held just the slightest edge of old frustrations.

    "Sorry, sorry—full credit to the savior of Mayview for blasting that big whatever-it-was to bits all by yourself." Jean leaned back on his log perch, shooting Spender a teasing wink. "And to Mina, lest we forget, for beating up an old lady."

    Mina sputtered out a garbled sound of unrefined offense. "The Witch wasn't just a–" A fist shook in Jean's direction. "I beat up fear itself!"

    "...Did you really... save Mayview?"

    Spender looked away from the somewhat playful Jean vs. Mina brawl that was unfolding at the fireside. Isabel was staring up at him, seemingly equal parts shyness, curiosity and awe.