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.
• Ambiguously Brown: 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.
• 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).
• 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?
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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".
• 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.
• 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.
• Selkies and Wereseals: Veser is the son of a selkie and the man who stole her skin.
• Shout-Out: To Silent Hill 2, of all things; 312 appears as the door number for both Doc Worth's... "practice," and Ples' house.
• 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.
• 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.
• Tsundere: Conrad cares about you, but it's not like he likes you or anything...◊
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Conrad and Hanna 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.
• 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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