Webcomic / Hanna Is Not a Boy's Name

HiNaBN is a webcomic written and illustrated by Tess Stone. The comic is a "sugarcoated horror" Urban Fantasy about a wannabe paranormal investigator named Hanna Falk Cross, who is visited at the beginning of the story by the main character. The two become partners just in time for Conrad Achenleck to complain about a vampire in his flat. Long story short, Conrad gets bitten and they completely fail their first mission, setting the vampire free from a curse of some sort. Some other vampires aren't so pleased about that, starting the main story arc.

Currently contains zombies, vampires, weird magic, ghosts, werewolves and selkies. There was more to come, but don't hold your breath. As of February 14, 2016, it has officially been 5 years without an update. Also, the original site's domain expired, this means you'll have to read the comic on Tumblr and the links to the pages won't work anymore.

Tess has illustrated a new comic written by Ananth Panagariya called Buzz! In the meantime, it seems like he's given up on Hanna. There were rumors about some sort of legal trouble between Tess and 4D Entertainment, his publisher, that resulted in Tess being unable to continue Hanna, but this rumor appears to be untrue. Tess is now working on a new webcomic called Not Drunk Enough.

Please place character-specific tropes on the character sheet.

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This webcomic provides examples of:

• The Alcoholic: Ples stops by the liquor shop weekly, buys more than one man should need, and frequents bars to boot. But he apparently holds his liquor quite well.
• All There in the Manual: A lot of extra information and trivia comes from Q&As on the author's deviantART page. Here's a good summary of the answers.
• Alt Text: The pictures of the characters on the Cast page.
• Ambiguously Brown: Toni. At least, her skin color's darker than the rest of the cast's. (She's half-Asian and half-Latina.)
  • Zombie is frequently speculated to be Asian or part-Asian, based on how his human form looked. As a zombie he's even more racially ambiguous, since his skin is a fairly dark green and his eyes are extremely sunken and shadowed.
  • Casimiro, but Word Of God says he was a really tanned Italian when he died.
• Ambiguously Gay: Several of the male characters. Except for Ples, who is actually confirmed to be gay.
• Ambiguously Human: The only human Hanna seems to regularly spend time with is the medical school dropout, Worth, who he relies on to fix him up when he's injured because he has some kind of horrible secret that he only trusts Worth with. It certainly connected to the fact that he's a "rotten hollow shell of a boy" with an enormous scar on his chest. That's held together with staples.
• Anti-Climax: Usually the start of an epic fight, the confrontation between Casimiro and Toni ends in a game of cards.
• Art Evolution: In a very short timeframe- a difference can be seen only a few months into the comic.
  • To contrast the first few pages of the chapter one and the latest few pages of chapter three, the colors have become less saturated, and the lines seem softer (particularly noticeable with Hanna and Zombie's designs).
• Author Appeal: He's really got a thing for guys with feminine names.
  • And more notably, sideburns and glasses.
  • Also large foreheads.
  • And often "heroin thin".
• Berserk Button: Do not mess with {...} or Hanna will fuck you up something FIERCE.
  • And he doesn't always give warning.
  • Not quite as extreme, but for the record: he's 24. And he'd thank you to remember it, okay?
• Beware the Nice Ones: Hanna. See above examples.
• Big "SHUT UP!": Hanna delivers one to Ples when he starts going after {...}.
• Blood from the Mouth: Eight out of ten doctors do not approve of it.
• Bold Inflation
• Broken Hero: Tess's DA sketches heavily imply Hanna to be this.
• Butterfly of Death and Rebirth: Used when Zombie first meets Hanna, as they discuss Zombie's background. (Or lack thereof.)
• Butt-Monkey: Conrad. The author himself has stated that his favorite pairing is Conrad/Misery.
• Captain Obvious: "Good freaking Jesus, this guy loves clocks." Lampshaded by {...}.
  • Hanna pulls one at the very beginning: Holy s***! You're dead!
• Cast of Snowflakes
• Character Tics: Lamont has an unfortunate habit of laughing uncontrollably when nervous or threatened.
• Cute Little Fangs: Conrad and really all of the vampires when they're in bat form. Though thus far, Conrad really only has the one fang.
• Death Glare: He's old enough to drink. And she only sings out of key when she's nervous.
• Definitely Just a Cold: Hanna will insist he's fine after vomiting blood, collapsing and displaying some nasty scars.
• Demonic Possession: Happens to Zombie although the possessor in question is not a demon, but a ghost.
• Design Student's Orgasm
• Don't Sneak Up on Me Like That!: Veser meets the main characters this way in a haunted theatre.
• Drop the Hammer: Hanna uses an ordinary hammer that he's marked with runes to fight all kinds of supernatural creatures. It's shown to be just as effective at pulling out nails as it is at wounding a vampire.
  • Hanna, do you have your hammer? It's time to negotiate.
• Embarrassing Middle Name: Falk.
• Emergency Transformation: Conrad's transformation into a vampire.
• Mr. Fanservice: If you ask the fans, pretty much every male. Worth, Veser and Zombie seem to be big targets.
  • Not to mention Ples Tibenoch, who more or less had a sexytime following from the word "go". He's only been in a half-dozen strips so far, but the fanfics and fanart starring him number in the high double digits.
• Flat "What": "Oh shi-! Conrad, you just gotta keep watch okay? You can't come in because you weren't invited."
  • Adelaide also gives one when she sees that Conrade has returned, with help to evict her.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Hanna and Veser are sanguine, Doc and Casimiro are choleric, Conrad, Finas and Lee are melancholic and Zombie and Toni are phlegmatic.
• Functional Magic
• Gender-Blender Name: The name of the comic itself even lampshades it.
• Gilligan Cut: When bat-form Adelaide tells Conrad to leave, he animatedly expresses his feelings about leaving his own apartment. Next panel is of him and Zombie sitting outside the door. "I hate that bat."
• Goggles Do Nothing: Veser is typically drawn with goggles hanging around his neck for seemingly no other reason than design.
• Groin Attack: A rather painful one, considering vampiric strength.
• HA HA HA—No: Veser's exact words to Lee when he insinuates that Mrs. Hatch is sticking around for the sake of her son. She really just wants her pelt back.
• Hell Is That Noise: When the protagonists go to visit Tibenoch. They arrived at his house, and started hearing a creepy "tk tok" sound. And then more creepy things happened. And the "tk tok" sounds stayed for several strips, until 12:21, when the clock stopped. Not really sure what happened at 12:21….
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Hanna and the narrator. Possibly also the case with Finas and Casimiro, although as "nobody seems to know exactly what their relationship entails" there is possibly also a bit of ambiguity on the 'heterosexual' part.
  • Also, in regards to Finas and Casimiro, the fact that their cast page states that they are "most likely hedonists" only adds to that ambiguity. If any.
• Hunter of Monsters: Abner Van Slyk, hunter of vampires. All vampires. Even the wusses.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The chapter titles all begin with "In Which" and almost every page title is taken from a quote on the page.
• I'm Having Soul Pains: Hanna exhibits something like this when a ghost passes through him. He collapses, appears to be in sizable pain and loses consciousness for a while afterwards.
• Immortality Immorality: Subverted: Hanna converts Conrad into a vampire after he finds Conrad dead (or maybe only near death). Hanna is all wild-eyed and blood-spattered, and laughs rather maniacally when he succeeds, but still isn't portrayed as a bad person for it, although Conrad has mixed feelings.
• Impairment Shot: Used at least twice—once when a ghost phased through Hanna and he fainted, and again when Worth woke up with a hangover.
• Intergenerational Friendship: Ples and Veser seem to be headed down this path, if concept sketches are to be believed.
• In Which a Trope Is Described: Each of the chapters has a title like this.
• Journey to the Center of the Mind: Zombie's possession is somewhere between this and a Dream Sequence.
• Left Hanging: As Tess Stone hasn't been heard from in months, the comic is stuck in limbo, at least for now. He stopped updating when every major character was in mortal peril. Zombie, Hanna, and Toni are locked with a questionably sane Ples (who just whipped out a gun and fired it), and Conrad's trapped with Lamont, Worth, and Adelaide trying to get to Hanna and escape Abner. Oh, and Veser ran out a while ago, and we never found out where he went.
  • The cliffhanger is even less likely to ever be resolved, since Tess Stone has returned with a new comic named Buzz.
• Manly Tears: Veser does his best to pull this off, but winds up getting something between Manly Tears and Inelegant Blubbering. Whatever you call it, the scene's a real Tear Jerker.
• Misfit Mobilization Moment: These misfits have so far failed to make a functional force, but they are all pretty... odd and seem to be lined up to form a tight-knit group.
• Motifs:
  • All the characters have a shade of red or orange on their designs somewhere.
  • Crosses appear everywhere: on characters' clothes (Zombie's jacket sleeves, Conrad's necklace thing in the first chapter, Toni's hairpin, Casimiro's eye), in the backgrounds, sometimes the panels themselves, and the title graphic. Cross is also the main character's last name.
    • Hanna has a cross on the bottom of his shoe, with a matching scar.
    • When Hanna sews Zombie's arm back on, he uses a cross-stitch. It's even highlighted in white against a black silhouette.
• Must Be Invited: Apparently required.
• No Name Given: The narrator, to a point he's sometimes referred to as Visible Silence.
• Noodle People: Even Tess has described most of his male cast members as being "heroin thin".
• Occult Detective: Hanna's profession, and now Zombie's. How good Hanna is at his job is...debatable thus far.
• Odd Friendship: It looks like Veser and Ples Tibenoch might become this. Casimiro and Finas have been practically inseparable for centuries, though their vastly different personalities cause many to wonder how they even tolerate each other.
• Odd-Shaped Panel: So, so much.
• Off-Model: In the beginning, Zombie's face was often shaped slightly differently in most panels. See Art Evolution.
• Orphaned Series: Until further notice.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: And how.
• Our Zombies Are Different: Hanna used the Z-word.
• Painting the Medium
• Peekaboo Corpse: Lee
• Power Trio: Hanna, Conrad, and the zombie. Unpredictable but brilliant Hanna is The Kirk, Only Sane Man Conrad is The McCoy, and the imperturbably calm zombie is The Spock.
• Precision F-Strike: Though the characters swear plenty of times in the comic, it's usually censored. The Symbol Swearing is dropped during more tense moments to reflect the seriousness of the situation.
  • Hanna delivers an uncensored F-strike when trying to bring Conrad back to life. It works.
  • Also when he unleashes his well-hidden inner badass to call Lee out for possessing Zombie.
  • A subtle one made its way in here.
  • And a well-deserved one from Veser here.
• Psychotic Smirk: Ples.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: The vampires.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Hanna (red) and Zombie (blue). Also Casimiro (red) and Finas (blue).
  • Visually reversed at the start of Chapter 3 due to the nighttime lighting. Hanna is blue (in moonlight) and Zombie is red (because of his eyelights).
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: Toni's werewolf form is usually something along the lines of Savage Wolves, but due to her power source being damaged, she takes this form.
  • Also, Conbat.◊
  • Make that all vampire bats. And for the record, that's Finas and Casimiro.
• Running Gag:
  • Hanna's attempts to name {...}/Zombie.
  • The Smile Tally also seems to have the potential to become this.
  • Hanna is not a kid, he is 24, dammit!
• Samus Is a Girl: Inverted in the first two strips, of course, and played straight with Adelaide.
• Selkies and Wereseals: Veser is the son of a selkie and the man who stole her skin.
• Ship Tease: May we again draw your attention to this quick doodle from Tess during a livestream?
  • Are we forgetting all of those 'bromance' strips between Hanna and Zombie?
• Shout-Out: To Silent Hill 2, of all things; 312 appears as the door number for both Doc Worth's... "practice," and Ples' house.
• Sliding Scale of Comedy and Horror
• Stealth Pun: Hanna can do magic by drawing symbols with his marker. It's a magic marker.
  • Also, when Zombie nailed Adelaide with a hammer.
  • In this strip, Lee asks a very bruised and battered-looking young Veser where his father is. Veser's response? "Beats me."
• Symbol Swearing: Used for effect most of the time. Characters are allowed to land uncensored swears during particularly tense moments.
• This Is Reality: "This isn't The Lost Boys!"
• 1000 Origami Cranes: Apparently, one of these meant something to {...} before he died. The significance is pretty much lost to him now, so Hanna's working on folding 1,000 of them to give them a new meaning. You can go d'awww now. We'll wait.
  • Even more d'aww, the fans have started making them as well. As of late July '10, they're over halfway there.
• Tick Tock Terror: The the eerie "tk tok" echoing through Tibenoch's house. The "tk tok" is displayed over several strips, until 12:21, when the clock stopped... what happened then is implied to be dangerous but is anyone's guess.
• Tranquil Fury: Don't tick off Casimiro. Just..don't.
• Tsundere: Conrad cares about you, but it's not like he likes you or anything...◊
• Unsound Effect: Sometimes, for example: "Awkward"
• Vampire Bites Suck: Conrad learned it the hard way.
• Vampires Are Sex Gods: At least according to the fandom. Though Word of God tells us Conrad is still a virgin.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: what Doc Worth and Lamont Toucey appear to be.
  • Conrad and Hanna also count. Hanna treats Conrad as his friend: completely oblivious to the fact that he annoys Conrad to no end. Hilarity Ensues.
  • Conrad actually has admitted that he likes Hanna. Hanna's just a bit...excitable.
• Weirdness Magnet: according to Toni, Hanna.
• Whodunnit to Me?: {...} was apparently murdered, and he did come back in (more or less) one piece. He seems genuinely disinterested in questioning how or why he was killed, or who was responsible; but the fans and other cast members exhibit a healthy curiosity.
• With Friends Like These...: Doc seems to think he and Conrad are friends, anyway, though the sentiment is probably not mutual.
  • Worth and Lamont show their love by beating the daylights out of each other on what appears to be a fairly frequent basis.
    • And then apologize like little kids.

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