Hanna Is Not a Boy's Name/WMG

Main page here.

There is a ghost inside of Hanna, and the scars and staples somehow hold it in.

Possibly the source of his magic? He does state that his magic taints his blood, as I assume digesting a ghost would.

Ples's ticking noise predicts the death of whomever's closest to him.

It makes sense, the guy at the bar said it sounded different than normal, and Hanna definitely looks like he knows something's up. Look for yourself.

• Or it might be because he's missing a gear.

Hanna can't die, because he's not technically alive in the first place.

Which is why he's so unfazed by all this stuff--no matter what happens to him he'll still be okay, so there's no point in worrying about it. Worth seemed to be more concerned about other people finding out about what's up with Hanna than the fact that Hanna was looking pretty dead after the first encounter with Lee's ghost. It explains why he looks so young, 'cause he doesn't age, and why he's so light and thin, 'cause he doesn't actually have organs and whatnot in him to weigh him down. That stapled-shut abdominal "scar" of his looks kind of like it can be opened/closed without much issue... he probably needs to open it every so often for system maintenance.

He is this way because of some sort of accident, or disease, or something else that would have killed him under normal circumstances. The things that happen to him when the life support system is disrupted are symptoms he was suffering (or would have suffered eventually) at the time it was put in place.

Two out of three of the main guys are undead, why not go for the whole hog?

• You know, this would be a Poison Oak Epileptic Tree, if it weren't for the fact that I can't fit it into Epileptic Trees, no matter how much I WANT to.
• Interestingly, this page from Chapter 2 seems to support this theory, with Casimiro calling Hanna a "rotten hollow shell of a boy".
  • And shortly after Conrad is turned into a vampire, he asks, "What smells dead?" With a zombie standing right there, Conrad guesses it's Hanna. Hanna fesses up in a rather suspicious, uncomfortable way.

"Nrrgh. It must be because I use magic, it taintsmyblood, BUT ANYWAYS!"

• Also note this official art. When Hanna was a teenager, something awful apparently happened to him and he got kinda creepy-looking for a while. And he doesn't seem to have grown since. Perhaps the reason he's Older Than He Looks is that he's an Undead Child.
  • Not to mention the quote at the bottom of the art: "After all this time, I'm still exactly the same. Trust me."
• This is also probably the reason a seemingly-normal human like Hanna feels the need to go to an unqualified, mediocre, back-alley Dr. Jerk when he's hurt. Word of God somewhere stated that Hanna has some sort of secret, which is why he goes to Doc Worth, and, anyway, one kind of imagines that a normal human who also happens to have six staples in his chest would go to an actual MD barring weird circumstances.
• Word of God states he had some sort of run-in with a ghost at sixteen, which might have ended up in his parents' death. But keep in mind that, although Adelaide claims he "smells of death", she states he is alive.
  • Maybe he's only half-alive, and there's some kind of magic keeping him from dying. Considering magic taints your blood, that might explain why he looked so messed up for a while and why he smells dead - it's a side effect of using a spell powerful enough to keep him alive.
• As for the cause of his "death": It's possible he was possesed by the ghost and forced to do horrible things, and the stress from that and the exorcism of the ghost almost destroyed his body.
  • Which could also serve to explain what happened to his family when he was teenager.
• On the other hand, it might not be his body that was affected, but his soul. Not having a intact soul could explain why Lee passing through him affected him so much.
• Whatever it is, Worth thinks it'd be handy. That's probably not a good sign.
  • Worth was talking about how he once considered becoming a witch doctor, not about Hanna's predicament. Though I guess it says something about it anyway--if Worth treats physical ailments only (regular and magically-inflicted ones, but physical all the same) then it goes without saying it's something wrong with Hanna's body and not his soul.
• I'd like to add something I noticed near the beginning of the comic- when Hanna asks Zombie where he got Hanna's business card, he replies with "I forgot." This means that Zombie got the card before he died, if I understand his predicament correctly, and therefore he has had the card for at least 10 years. 10 years ago, Hanna would have only been 14, which is crazily young for a kid to have a dangerous profession like that one, not to mention that he probably wouldn't be popular enough to have business cards. If he's been dead for a while, he could be even older than he says he is, in which case the age thing doesn't register, which makes it possible for him to have a thriving business for the past 10 years.
  • Also, if the card is from 10 years ago, then that means Hanna's had the same flat for 10 years, as the number was on the business card. It's kind of hard to keep a flat when you're 14.

Viral is Veser reincarnated.

Think about it. Sharp shark-like teeth. Woobie-ish. Both violent. Veser has glowy green eyes, which is sort of one of the effects of Spiral Power. So to make up for his horrible home life, Veser is reincarnated into being a total Badass who can't have a family that'll mess him up. However, fate still screws with him and makes him a Woobie.

Veser's hoodie is his selkie pelt.

That's why he's so evasive when questioned about it, and since he's only half selkie, he doesn't have a "full" pelt; it's also not as powerful and controlling, meaning he doesn't have to have it on at all times.

• • This question has been asked, and it has been Jossed

Conrad is secretly a time-traveling Nazi.

It explains his Teutonic Cross-like necklace in the beginning of Chapter 1, and with a last name like Achenleck, it's not entirely improbable.

• To elaborate, he was sent by the Nazis to the future to allegedly do research on the occult. However, in the process of trapping Sassybat to send back to Germany circa 1940, he let her loose and she took control of his apartment. Conrad had already begun to be disillusioned by the whole Nazi business (I never said he was a good Nazi), but this incident was the last straw. He decided that he would stay in the future permanently a while ago. He makes excuses to himself that he was technically K.I.A., so he couldn't go back even if he wanted to.

The story takes place Twenty Minutes Into the Future.

This picture shows a flat-screen television in the background, something that wasn't around in a decade before 2010. {...}, alive in the picture, has been dead for ten years, perhaps more. Thus, we can deduce that the picture was taken sometime around 2005-2008, and the story takes place around 2015 or later.

• • It doesn't particularly look like a flat-screen TV to me. The angle to the viewer is such that we possibly just can't see the curvature of the screen or the bulky back.
    • No, it's definitely a flatscreen. You can see the inner edge of the frame running an almost parallel line to the screen, something that wouldn't happen on a screen with curvature. Plus, TVs with curved glass screens are too heavy to suspend like that without some kind of a shelf underneath. Cool. I never noticed that before.
    • This troper remembers seeing flatscreens in some of the fancier places when she was growing up in the 90s. Still puts the timeline towards a 15 minute future, but not quite as far from present.

Conrad stole {...}'s hands!

Or something. The last time, to date, {...}'s hands have been visible was here. Note that he's saying to Conrad, "Need a hand?" Since that point, he's always worn gloves. Obviously, Conrad took him literally and gnawed them off, or perhaps only one but {...} doesn't want to do the Michael Jackson thing. Or, alternately, something is just generally wrong with {...}'s hands aside from his being green, as he wears gloves even while chilling out indoors. One assumes that he just doesn't sleep, so probably sitting and reading in Hanna's room is like sleeping for him. Who wears gloves to bed?!

• ...Or he could possibly be trying to prevent people from freaking out... see here where he mentioned wanting to be discreet, there explaining the scarf and (later) high-collared jacket + fedora. In that page, if you look, there's a rather obvious, raised stitch line where it would appear a good chunk of his hand was sewn on. You're entitled to your opinion, of course, I just question that a bit since Conrad hasn't shown any extreme personality shifts, so I'm a little skeptical. I suppose we'll have to wait until {...} loses a glove.

Hanna's parents were involved with the supernatural.

Somewhat hinted in the character interviews in that Hanna will do just about anything to avoid talking about his family. When asked if they were tied to the paranormal, Hanna quickly changed the subject to macaroni. Also, official artwork and guest comics alike subtly imply that he's been somehow connected to the supernatural since he was pretty young. Look at the 'X'-shaped markings on the soles of Hanna's shoes in the official art, and how that mark was later reproduced as a scar on the bottom of his foot when he was older. Little things like that allude to Hanna having something of an occult background.

Building on that...

Hanna is the son of the/a reaper.

It would certainly explain a LOT, like the fact that he smells like death.

• This troper personally thinks he made a Deal with the Devil.

Ples is some kind of cyborg or clockwork man.

He's followed everywhere by a persistent ticking sound, and the author describes him as someone who's experienced "a lot more than most people his age." A popular theory ^{[dead link]} among Deviant ART fans.

• Considering how the Latest comics have Tibenoch driping a blood/Oil combination from the wound on his side, it's probably not that out there.
• Not to mention his seemingly Bender-like ability to consume alcohol as what might be some type of fuel.

Building on the Reaper guess and the immortal one; Hanna has a deal with, is one, or is the son of a Reaper which will explain his immortality.

Ples is evil.

...What? He is an Evil Overlooker on the poster.

• Not quite.

Toni's necklace is an inro.

She's half-Japanese. It'd make sense.

Hanna is Haruhi.

No, seriously, hear me out, guys. So Hanna, who doesn't know about his power to bend the universe to his will, is really lonely and desperate for friends. Let's see who he draws in: first, Hanna needs somebody to fix up him and his big ol' scar, and can't go to a regular doctor. Suddenly, a convenient Worth pops up. Then, he needs a friend - someone who won't ever leave him and doesnt have anyone who will take him away from Hanna. Oh hi there, Zombie. Then there's Hanna's failure to save Conrad. Either some low self-esteem on Hanna's part causes him to subconsciously fail at paranormal investigating - or is he again influencing the outcome so he gets another friend who depends on him and knows about the supernatural? Hmm. Maybe Lee's murder happens so Hanna gets a real case to solve. Maybe Ples will be the result of Hanna wanting a father figure. Oh, the possibilities.

Abner is Hanna's father

Think about it. They're both gingers and both into paranormal things. The look pretty similar anyway. AND the "looking a huge deal younger than you actually are" thing could run in the family. Hanna looks in his teens when he's really 24, and Abner looks to be mid-thirties so that would put him at an age to be Hanna's father.

• Alternate theory: they're brothers.

Worth is a Rune-addict

Its clear that Doc Worth is on something that isn't exactly healthy and apperently Hanna pays him in Runes.

Conrad is evil.

If one is to go by Buffy the Vampire Slayer logic, vampires don't have souls unless something is done to put their soul back in. As far as this troper can tell, nothing had been done to make sure that Conrad retained his soul. The only reason he behaves well is because he's smart, and doesn't want everyone else turning on him and staking him.

Tessa is going to abandon this comic for a new project within a few months.

It's become a bit of a trend with her, and Hanna hasn't been properly updated since early August.

• Well, to be fair, she's been doing the convention circuit all summer, which hasn't given her much time to update. Not to mention she's been working on autographing countless pre-ordered volumes of the first chapter. Her sister has stated on the front page of Hanna that we'll be getting updates when con season is over.
• For the moment, Tessa's still working on it, having finally posted "an update".
• We're back on track, for now. As of Nov. 9th, she's been posting more frequently than once every other day.
• Sadly, as of April 6th, we haven't had a proper update for two months, and nothing at all since valentines day. This WMG is looking more and more valid each day.
  • Noooooo...
  • It's all the way into June now, and still nothing. Comic's dead, kids. ^[1]
    • Tessa has recently resurfaced on the internet, and a drawing of Conrad has appeared. Maybe the hiatus is nearly over.
      • Link, please?
      • "Heache"^[2]
      • That picture is from February.
      • As of March 26, 2012, the comic has been on "hiatus" for over a year. Seems like it's officially gone.

As the name of the comic would suggest, Hanna is not a boy.

• He's an alien.
• He's a zombie.
• He's neither male nor female.
• He's both male and female.
• Despite appearances, Hanna is 24 years old (and therefore a man, not a boy).

{...} was animated by a wish on one thousand cranes.

In a Monkey Paw scenario, someone (probably the owner of this photograph) wished on a thousand cranes for their missing/dead loved one to be back. It worked. Sort of.

The Silver Hip Flask.

• In the current arc Tibenoch appears to have gone off the deep end and is carrying a silver hip flask than appears to be leaking green smoke. The hip flask is :
  • A potent magic, that brings out the inner Jerkass.
  • A potion designed to remove inhibitions.
  • An alcohol distilled by Tibenoch to enable himself to get drunk (finally). The night he tests it is the night Hanna and co drop by.
  • We know it has something to do with both personalities, and Tibenoch is lying when he says he doesn't know what it is, so I propose it's a potion that has something to do with why he probably murdered Lee and stole Veser's mum's selkie pelt.

Ples Tibenoch made himself into a cyborg.

This may not sound like much of a speculation, but there are some nuances that come with it worth considering. Either Ples or Tibenoch turned the man into a cyborg to contain the other and restrict his appearances to a predictable pattern. At first I thought it might be Ples that built himself into a cyborg to control his other personality, Tibenoch, especially since Tibenoch says that Ples must "fancy himself a scientist" but seeing how Tibenoch is complaining that the tonic was "changing the pattern" (see below), it's more likely that Tibenoch did the cyborgizing, although his purpose is unclear.

• This might also explain the gates closing at exactly 12:21 AM. Maybe Ples had programmed for those gates to close at that exact time so that his house could contain Tibenoch until, like clockwork, Tibenoch would retreat and Ples could go about his daily business without having to worry about terrorizing the townsfolk when he loses control.

Tibenoch: This tonic is actually changing the pattern...
Ples: Good. You have overstayed your welcome.
Tibenoch: Haha. Still acting as if you were a victim...

Worth's organs are failing

Based on "this page and the next", where we see that he's bothering to wear gloves while he handles what appears to be a human organ, and he is very pissed off that Conrad caused him to drop it.

• Or the organ could be for Hanna, the "hollow shell of a body", who just recently had a mean run in with a ghost and who Worth cares about.
  • Or the heart is for selling, and he is upset because once it has fallen on the floor he will have to sell it at a discount price.
    • This is the most likely explanation. The heart is probably for another one of Worth's clients. If it was at all important to the plot, he probably wouldn't have dropped it, or been a lot more than just irritated at it falling on the floor.

That hooker Conrad encountered

Was really Abner in disguise, scouting for Vampires.

{...} and Abner are related.

Compare the two of them for a moment, using un-zombie pictures of Dotty. Abner's skin is darker, but that could be because he got out more or something. Dotty was killed by a vampire but not turned, thus making Abner hate vampires so he tries to hunt them. It all makes sense now!

The Ples Tibenoch dual personality is due to a Jekyll and Hyde experiment.

Or at least an allusion to it. Tibenoch said that Ples "fancies himself a scientist". The similarities are striking except this has a mechanical instead of a chemical basis. It should be worth mentioning that the goal of the original experiment of The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was to eliminate the dark side of man altogether while keeping the good intact which failed spectacularly. The self-mutilation could be Ples's attempts to somehow undo what has been done. It is also interesting that the original novel's message was a warning against tampering with the natural order of things and an attempt at power man was not meant to control (a common sentiment at the time) which also fits in with the clockwork cyborg component of Ples Tibenoch.

Time moves at a slower rate for Ples Tibenoch.

The constant ticking noise, the whole conversation about people "going crazier when alone for a long time...They're stuck in some sort of personal "Year For Us, Hour For Others."

Hanna is a golem or other kind of construct

This is why he gets so angry when {...} is treated as an object.

Hanna's organs have been replaced with runes.

My personal explanation is the following: at 16 Hanna encountered and was subsequently possessed by a malevolent ghost and, lacking the same sort of guide as Zombie had, was unable to navigate the "maze" to free himself. In the course of its possession the ghost did massive systemic damage to Hanna's vital organs, degrading them to the point that only the ghost's power kept him alive. Hanna eventually escaped from the mind-maze only to wake up in a failing body, and had to resort to desperate measures to keep himself alive. Measures such as... cutting his abdomen apart and replacing all the half-dead organs with equivalent magic runes. Either he did this himself (unlikely, barring some sort of iron-assed willpower) or someone with knowledge of rune-magic did it for him.

Anyway. Since we know the runes are powered by the user's body somehow (he has to touch runes to activate them, etc etc) these runes must use up a tonne of base natural energy. I imagine it like a computer using nearly it's full capacity of RAM running critical programs. Hanna seems to be able to use small runes like light and whatever he attacked Ghost-Lee (oh god I just got that..) with, but using larger spells like the one that broke the curse on Adelaide drains so much power that some (or all) of the runes standing in for his organs are temporarily shorted out. While drawing the giganto-rune for Adelaide's curse-breaking spell Hanna looks a bit worried, like he knows there's a good chance he'll be hacking up blood in the next few minutes. Maybe that spell drained just enough power to say, take out the stomach rune for an instant, and when it reactivated the space where the stomach used to be is filled with blood, resulting in the lovely vomit panel a few pages later. Being possessed by Lee's ghost in the next chapter shorted out enough organs to knock him out briefly, and using whatever rune he did seconds after waking up tipped the balance and knocked him out again, this time for much longer. Of course, the runes eventually sort themselves out and he wakes up right as rain in Worth's office a few pages later.

Of course, it should probably be noted that this is all conjecture based on one readthrough and a lot of free time to ponder, so I take full credit for anything that sounds idiotic. Should be interesting if we ever get any new pages to see what kind of effects other spells have on Hanna's body. If my theory holds up then they should do more damage the more powerful they are, and the more magical a creature is (ghosts seem to be something like pure magic in this world) the more it should screw with his insides. Only time (or the author..) will tell!

... aaaaand that took up way more space than I anticipated.

• • This is my canon until Tessa says otherwise.

{...} is Toni's father. Or was when he was alive.

Toni is half hispanic, her mother, half Japanese, her father. What we've seen of {...} when he was alive has shown him to be oriental, quite possibly Japanese. One of the Q&As said that Toni would use a single wish to "cheat death and bring someone back to life". What if she tried? {...} saw the guide as an origami crane, a Japanese thing. Lastly the ages, Toni is very young, I'd say late teens to early twenties. How old is zombie? Remember, he's not been aging for ten years, and he looks to be around late twenties to early thirties. If we put Toni at, say, 18, and Zombie at 30 when he died. I think 30 is plenty old enough to have an 8 year old daughter, don't you.

Hanna is not a boy's name because Hanna is not a boy but a woman.

Hanna Falk Cross is actually the full name of a married woman with Falk being her maiden name. The mysterious incident in which "Hanna's" "parents" died and "Hanna" got all creepy looking in youth involves the death of Mrs. Cross's husband and son, but somehow she got bodyswapped with her son and now lives on in his body but continues to use her name instead of her son's. The paranormal investigation hobby includes a hope that she'll figure out what happened to her husband and son and maybe that she'll be able to see them again/make things right whatever that entails (I'm not quite sure). Also cue a possible romance with {...} if she gets her body back.

Ples Tibenoch is a split-personality...but the "evil" personality is the original, and the "nice" one came along later.

Because wouldn't that be so deliciously ironic?

Hanna made a contract with Kyuubey, and is some type of Puer Magus.

Puella Magi have to watch how much magic they use because it taints their soul gem. Hanna's magic taints his blood. Both series have a lot of runes. Hanna's cheerful nature is an attempt to not fall to despair and become a Witch. Puella Magi are technically dead bodies who only live because of their soul gems, Hanna "smells dead" but is very much alive...

{...} is actually Colin Aston from Two Keys

They're both fairly quiet, good in a fight, have a deadpan sense of humor, and look pretty similar. Clearly, whatever mess Colin ends up in leads to him getting kicked into the Hanna!verse, a process that would normally be deadly--but Colin survives as an amnesiac zombie because he's Occult.

{...}'s real name

Is also, technically, a girl's name.

• Myself, I sometimes think that he's an Evelyn.
• Jayne has gained certain popularity.

Tessa is absent because she's completing the next book.

It'd be a decent marketing strategy to publish the next book in print first, then update slowly after, since it gives more incentive to buy the book. It also provides her with a massive buffer, which might even out the erratic update schedule a little. It doesn't explain her total internet blackout since February, and might end up a little counterproductive due to the drama that accompanied it, but this is the WMG page after all.

Something bad happened to Tessa and that's why she's not around anymore.

Guys, it's been a while, and she's pretty much disappeared off the face of the internet. Now I'm not saying she died or anything, but something must have happened... (I'm just gonna leave it vague and not speculate too far; I don't know if talking about the author is taboo in this fandom or not.)

• According to this statement from the publisher, she's apparently fine, but they're respecting her privacy and not asking what's going on or telling us if they already know. It's pretty much assumed that she's abandoned the comic for whatever reason, but decided not to let anyone know by making an announcement (presumably because she doesn't want them to be angry with her.)

Tessa (the author) pulled an Anne Rice and decided she doesn't like creepy stuff anymore.

• She's become some sort of religious fundamentalist and has renounced all the vampire and zombie stuff from her life and is currently on her way to being the next Jack Chick. The reason she still hasn't resurfaced is because she is currently learning all that she can from the master, and plans to take his place as lead artist and writer of the Chick Tracts when he passes away.

Has anyone considered that D and S might be {…}’s initials?

When first asked about a name, {…} states that it might have started with a D…or maybe an S. What if those are both correct? People tend to have both a first and last name after all.

1. ↑ Hopefully someday she'll think to release a journal or something explaining the back stories of some of the more mysterious characters, and maybe sketch out where the story was GOING to go. Otherwise she's pretty much officially achieved douchebag status for abandoning a sizeable fandom without any warning or explanation. The length of this WMG page alone illustrates just how many people she's blueballed!
2. ↑ That is NOT Conrad. It is fanart for the comic Fishbones. That is the main character, who happens to have a small resemblance to Conrad.