History Webcomic / SpyingWithLana

* AmbiguouslyBrown: Lana's ethnicity is never mentioned, and her skin tone is definitely brown.

* ExcusePlot: Let's be honest; the plots are basically reasons to (a) get Lana naked (or close), (b) get Lana having sex, and (c) get Lana shooting guns, riding fast vehicles and blowing shit up. Often with at least two of the aforementioned happening simultaneously. Or (d) laugh at Lana's reactions and misfortunes as the incompetence of the agency gets to her.

* DeadpanSnarker: Lana, definitely. See CasualDangerDialog for one example.

* CasualDangerDialog: Her first conversation that we see has her snarking to her chief that she's "little busy right now" in the middle of a gun fight.

* BuxomIsBetter: Somewhat deconstructed. Lana's large breasts help in her honey traps. However, they do not help when she needs to move about in tight spaces.

The comic is updated every Monday and can be read [[http://spyingwithlana.com/archive/ here]]. So far, 29 stories have been completed and are available:
* Case #1: The Case of the Mixed-up Case (Lana is sent to infiltrate a group, which turns out to [[spoiler:consist ''only'' of her fellow agents.]])
* Case #2: The Upside Down Case (Lana teams up with an incompetent fellow agent.)
* Case #3: Quick n' Dirty (Lana retrieves a prototype.)
* Case #4: Flashbang! (Lana stops a deposed archduke armed with a nuclear warhead.)
* Case #5: The Late Show (Lana teams up with another agent to steal a top-secret device.)
* Case #6: Ring of Fire (Lana goes on vacation, but ends up on an assignment.)
* Case #7: Grand Prix (Once again, Lana's part of a team. This time, there's a rival spy team pitted against them as they retrieve weapon designs.)
* Case #8: Object of Desire (Lana tracks down a bomber.)
* Case #9: Tricks of the Trade (Lana infiltrates arm dealers to retrieve a protoype.)
* Case #10: The Unusual Bedside Manner of Naughty Nurse Lana (Lana disguises herself as a nurse.)
* Case #11: It Girl (Lana undertakes an EscortMission.)
* Case #12: Sweet Nothings (Lana goes about stealing components of a secret prototype.)
* Case #13: Action Squad! (Lana has to work with a military squad to resolve a kidnap.)
* Case #14: Second Skin (Lana pretends to be a double agent.)
* Case #15: The Cat's Meow (Lana investigates one of the agency's contacts, who may be double dealing with the enemy.)
* Case #16: The Morning After (Lana tries to return home after a mission.)
* Case #17: Best Served Hot (Lana is hunted down by a vengeful biker.)
* Case #18: Black Ops, White Lies (Lana partners up with an assassin.)
* Case #19: Everybody Loves Lana (Lana infiltrate a criminal organisation.)
* Case #20: Enemies with Benefits (Lana's current mission is interrupted by two incompetent colleagues needing help with ''their'' mission.)
* Case #21: The Hero Position (An old ally[=/=]lover of Lana's invites her to an exotic island kingdom as thanks for her heroism. Will Lana receive her due reward for once? Of course not.)
* Case #22: The Big Hookup (Lana goes on a blind date with a nice, normal guy with no connection to any spy craziness. Guess how things go.)
* Case #23: Cupid and Psycho (Lana's attempt to steal a top-secret codex from a ruthless dictator leads to an awkward hiding place, a case of mistaken identity, and true love in unexpected places.)
* Case #24: Agent Provocateur (An increasingly fragmented kingdom with ever-shifting alliances proves frustrating to Lana when the one thing that all parties are interested in turns out to be her.)
* Case #25: Slippery When Wet (The security chief of a shady laboratory finds herself increasingly drawn to Lana over the course of a rainy evening -- which is a bit of a problem for her, since Lana's trying to steal the lab's big secret.)
* Case #26: Lana the Spy and her Amazing All-Singing, All-Dancing, Super Scientific Second-Hand Dream Machine (The Agency has a new supercomputer. Will it make the Agency less incompetent, less inefficient, and less focussed on sending Lana into pointless and over-sexualised screw-ups? What do you think?)
* Case #27: Animal Instincts (An anthology of short stories involving a very forgetful crime boss, a dimwitted biker gang, two cops on a stakeout, a surprising amount of animal-themed codenames and, of course, Lana getting into X-rated scrapes.)
* Case #28: Hard Case (Lana's seduced the courier of a very important secret. All her back-up has to do is steal the case it's in. Unfortunately for Lana, he's about as competent as everyone else who isn't her...)
* Case #29: Chaotic Neutral (Lana's on vacation again! Unfortunately for her, various other secret agencies at her resort keep trying to recruit her into their schemes. Unfortunately for ''them'', Lana's off the clock and doesn't give a shit about their schemes...)
* Case #30: The Tarantula Hawk's Kiss (in progress as of Jan 2022)


There are three issues which are available through purchases only.
* "Tricks of the Trade" (The chief's plans for a mission go bad, and Lana has to salvage the situation. Available as an ebook.)
* "The Bang Bang Club" (Lana goes on another EscortMission; bundled together with "The Late Show" for the "Double Play" ebook. The two stories are bundled together with "Ring of Fire" and "Grand Prix" for the physical graphic novel "Cinq à sept". [[note]]"five to seven" in Quebec French[[/note]])
* "Barely There" (Lana encounters a case of MistakenIdentity. Bundled together with the first three cases for the physical graphic novel "Year One" and the ebook "Year One Declassified")

* NippleAndDimed: The strip goes to absolutely ''ludicrous'' lengths to avoid showing Lana's nipples or vagina. It's actually impressive how much effort the artist puts into having Lana naked for two-thirds of the series but never actually ''showing'' anything.

* BikerBabe: Lana in "Tricks of the Trade" and "Second Skin".

* OnlySaneWoman: Lana thinks that she's this when it comes to the agency. Given the chief's incompetence (along with many fellow agents'), she has a point.

* Case #29: Chaotic Neutral (Lana's on vacation again! Unfortunately for her, various agencies at her resort keep trying to recruit her into their schemes. Unfortunately for ''them'', Lana's off the clock and doesn't give a shit about their schemes...)

* Case #27: Animal Instincts (An anthology of short stories involving a very forgetful crime boss, a dimwitted biker gang, two cops on a stakeout, a surprising amount of animal-themed codenames and, of course, Lana wearing minimal clothing.)

The comic is updated every Monday and can be read [[http://spyingwithlana.com/archive/ here]]. So far, 23 stories are available:

The comic is updated every Monday and can be read [[http://spyingwithlana.com/archive/ here]]. So far, 22 stories are available:

* TornClothes: Happens about every other issue.

* ActionGirl: Lana, definitely. The enemy female agents in ''Grand Prix'' and ''It Girl'' are [[DarkActionGirl Dark Action Girls]].

* BilingualBonus: In "Tricks Of The Trade", the man on Lana's escape yacht was singing parts of "La donna è mobile" ("The woman is fickle" in Italian), the Duke of Mantua's canzone from the beginning of act 3 of Giuseppe Verdi's opera ''Rigoletto''. Interestingly, while the song was an ironic one in the original play (the duke being the "fickle" one), it is appropriate here as Lana is indeed the "fickle woman".

* BrainlessBeauty: Averted and exploited by Lana, who encourages her opponents to think that she is this (if they don't already assume so). See Underestimating Badassery below.
* BrainyBrunette: Lana is smart enough to quote Latin proverbs and Robert Frost's poetry [[note]]''Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening'' in "Ring of Fire"[[/note]]. She is also able to think quickly on her feet. In "Flashbang!", at a costume party, she sees her target dressed up as [[Anime/DragonBallZ Vegetto]]. She then mentions Pan (another ''Dragon Ball'' character) and building a perfect-grade [[Anime/MobileSuitZetaGundam Qubeley]]. As expected, her target's attention is soon focused on her.[[note]]Although it should probably be acknowledged that the fact that she's also a statuesque busty brunette who, at that point, was wearing a nothing but construction hard hat, a pair of suspenders and tight hot-pants probably didn't hurt either.[[/note]]

* CassandraTruth: One of the thugs in Case #10 correctly deduces that Lana was a spy. However, no-one else believes him, and when he tries to take her out alone, he fails. Horribly.

* EthicalSlut: Played with; Lana is frequently disgruntled that her job basically requires her to be "a hooker with security clearance", but given how frequently she resorts to sex to further her purposes or for leisure, she does appear to have a naturally high sex drive and enjoy sex in and of itself. Her objections seem to be more that the work isn't particularly fulfilling, no one takes her seriously, the people's she's despatched to seduce are usually sleazy scumbags, and almost all of the people she finds herself working with are complete morons.

* FriendlyEnemy: Lana has moments of this with people she's fighting (usually women), if there's some third party that they each find equally irritating. In "The It Girl", Lana and a Girl Mook are beating the crap out of each other while the woman Lana is meant to be protecting is squealing with terror in the background.

* [[GuileHero Guile Heroine]]: If Lana is not bashing her opponents out cold, she's outsmarting them. Sometimes, she does both.

* HuntingTheMostDangerousGame: During the story of [[spoiler:The Hero Position]], Lana's antagonist throws her into his private game reserve with intent to hunt her down. [[GenreSavvy Lana immediately identifies the trope by name]], and is very annoyed, because "every two-bit crackpot in the world" seems to be fixated with it; she regards it as contemptibly lame.

* ObfuscatingStupidity: Lana's most common tactic to infiltrate some enemy organization is to pretend being a mere oversexed bimbo with little brains. This results in her being totally overlooked and underestimated -- very rarely does the bad guys ever suspect her of anything underhanded, while she's sabotaging their operations behind their back.

* [[OnlySaneMan Only Sane Woman]]: Lana thinks that she's this when it comes to the agency. Given the chief's incompetence (along with many fellow agents'), she has a point.

** That EscortMission Lana undertook in ''It Girl''? [[spoiler:All the other lady did was to sell the chief a laptop that he's not satisfied with.]]

** In ''The Morning After'', it becomes a RunningGag as Lana uses sex to shut her partner up whenever he starts stating his actual request in return for his services: busting his uncle out of a high security prison.

* BiTheWay: At first it seemed like Lana just has sex with women [[SituationalSexuality to complete an objective]], but she also has sex with them for fun.

* HelloNurse: Lana in Case #10.

* Case #23: Cupid and Psycho (In progress.)

* TheAce: Lana is the best her agency has to offer. Deconstructed in that her being the best in her agency meant that her talents are not fully utilized as her chief's incompetence limits her effectiveness as an agent.

* Case #22: The Big Hookup (In progress)

* BusmansHoliday: In "Ring of Fire", the chief sends her on vacation to an island resort, which is then invaded by a revolutionary force which Lana must thwart singlehandedly. She accuses the chief of setting this up deliberately, but he denies it and realises he gave her the wrong ticket and has had a combat team stationed in a five-star hotel in a riviera for several weeks.

* UndyingLoyalty: Whether it is to her country or to the agency, Lana shows this when in "Second Skin", she raises the FridgeLogic to her boss on why she shouldn't join an enemy when he was treating her better than the chief (good intel, competent team and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking good sex]]).

* BusmansHoliday: In "Ring of Fire", the chief sends her on vacation to an island resort, which is then invaded by a revolutionary force which Lana must thwart singlehandedly. She accuses the chief of setting this up deliberately, but he denies it and realises he gave her the wrong ticket and has had a combat team stationed in a five-star hotel in a riveria for several weeks.

* CreepyShadowedUndereyes: Lana has these. It does make her mildly menacing, if you're paying attention to them. [[FridgeBrilliance When you think about it, given Lana's frequent cover as a prostitute, she naturally misses out on her sleep many times.]]

* MusclesAreMeaningless: Lana frequently triumphs over opponents who are more muscular than her, often with a combination of wits and ImprovisedWeapon. Lana is an athletic woman (as noted in the official description), but she does not have a muscular figure. [[FridgeBrilliance Then again, a muscular hooker or secretary might attract more unwanted attention...]]

** His screwup in "Ring of Fire" costs Lana her vacation ''and'' throws her into an assignment which she's initially unprepared for.

* TheUnreveal: In "It Girl", we never find out why the enemy agents are after Lana's target. Goes into FridgeLogic territory when the agency's reason for wanting her is revealed.

* ExcusePlot: Let's be honest; the plots are basically reasons to (a) get Lana naked (or close), (b) get Lana having sex, and (c) get Lana shooting guns, riding fast vehicles and blowing shit up. Often with at least two of the aforementioned happening simultaneously.

The comic is updated every Monday and can be read [[http://spyingwithlana.com/archive/ here]]. So far, 20 stories are available:

* BiTheWay: Lana has no problem bedding another woman.