26
05/09
03:32
Hanna Is Not A Boy’s Name
I thoroughly blame Tessa Stone for getting me into the comic scene.
About six years ago, I think it was, I was just a wee teenager with absolutely no idea what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. Well, ok, I had a special sort of delirium that made me think I knew where I was going. I still wanted to be an astronomer at that point. I had wanted to be an astronomer ever since I was five years old and knew how to actually pronounce the word. I mean, what can I say? Being the first born in the family meant that craving for success had been buried into me at a young age (plus, my parents were pressuring me into looking at colleges by the eighth grade).
In any case, I was a struggling, lost, and confused teenager with the whole internet at my fingertips. However, instead of finding a grown-up job with an important-sounding title to start persuing, I found a few pages of Stone’s “Kill The City” in some corner of the web–more specifically, I found my gateway drug.
Thus began the downward spiral into the alternative comic art world and, eventually, what amounts to where I am right now.
Since I found those pages of Kill The City floating around the ‘tubes, I haven’t let Stone disappear off the radar. That project died a sad death, to be later replaced by newer runs and other projects (most notably a collaboration with her equally-talented sister, Under Lock & Key). Despite the fact that none of these projects have never seen completion, I waited. No matter how frustrating it was to think, “Oh man, she’s really going to go through with this one this time,” when I knew the comic wouldn’t, I waited. Like the patient stalker fan I am, I always waited.
Needless to say, when I heard she was working on a new project after a several-month hiatus, I broke out into a cold sweat. ‘No way,’ I shivered, ‘I thought she’d never come back.’
Stone described “Hanna Is Not A Boy’s Name” as a sort of side project to some other things she’s working on; a ‘comic exercise’ that is updated daily.
Updated. Daily. Oh, shit. This is the equivalent of rolling a bottle of vodka into an AA meeting to me, guys.
Hanna Is Not A Boy’s Name has some familiar supernatural overtones in it, but is anything but traditional. I’ve always admired Stone’s brilliant character designs, and this one is no exception to that. She breaks out of the predictable archetypes by introducing offbeat characters like an amnesiac undead and a passive-aggressive vampire into it. Rather than forcing humor down our throats, she really has a way with dark, natural humor created out of the sheer insanity of the situations she throws her characters into. As she describes it:
“It’s essentially about a crazy boy named Hanna who tries to be a super awesome paranormal investigator but really is scraping by the seat of his pants, told by a dead guy who really is sort of lukewarm about everything.”
There’s a neat concept and storyline behind the comic, but also a sense of freedom that I haven’t seen in her other work. I hate using this phrase, but: it’s fresh. I can’t think of a more exact use of that overabused phrase, really. It’s a break away from her normal stuff–but a really good breakaway. Like, ‘oh god please please please keep doing this if you don’t I will cry’ sort of breakaway. Simply by giving the panels a color treatment, there’s a fiery, tangy, citrusy flavor to every strip, not to mention the openness to the panels and the interplay between text, image, and panel. Text has always played a part in her work, but as of late, there seems to be a particular amount of attention being paid to the visual role of the word in her images. Which, of course, I adore.
I can only hope these will be collected and printed at some point in the near future. I still get sniffly whenever I remember that I missed the boat to grab a copy of some limited Under Lock & Key book prints, arghhh.
In any matter, what are you still doing here, reading this post? Get over to the blog and start reading, damnit. And then you can join me in staking out ’til the next update. Company in misery, folks.
If I can’t cure myself of this addiction, the least I can do is impose it upon the rest of you suckers.
(PS: I promised myself years ago that I was going to get a tattoo dedicated to Kill The City on my neck. It has yet to happen, but damned if I’m gonna break that promise.)
