Ant (originally created by Mario Gully) is a NEW ongoing title produced by Image Comics. Ant follows the path of young Hannah Washington as she develops into a hero who wants to protect the innocent and save the weak. She believes that somebody wants to fix the world, so why can’t it be her? The story is written, drawn, and coloured by Erik Larsen.
The issue begins with Hannah as Ant, before we are shown the backstory behind the character, it gives a lot of helpful context! Ant is originally a character in her diary that she wants to become. Her father works on a project with a government official named Apollo Steele (remember that name!) which is how Ant is created – through a serum.
As a young child, Hannah is hit by a car which makes her wonder why her Father was never there to save her, as she herself wanting to save other people. Eventually, her fathers project gets shut down, this causes some bad people to go after Hannah and her father after they’re attacked in the house, and after Hannah’s father gets shot he injects her with the serum he was working on.
This causes Hannah to turn into Ant! After the attack, she wakes up in an alleyway in her normal form and is greeted by none other than – Apollo Steele. And that’s where issue 1 ends!
Fun facts
Ant was originally created by Mario Gully when he was in jail for robbery. There was an Ant that had crawled in his cell and that’s where the story developed from. It eventually turned from sharing story’s with his cell mates to his passion project, with a lot of the story based on his daughter.
He sent his first submission for the story while in county jail. The very first appearance of Ant was in 2004, however each reboot and the original failed after bad audience reception and questionable time line / canon. He officially stopped working on Ant in 2007.
However, Ant today was sold to Erik Larson, which is where we pick up! You do not need to know any information on the previous runs of Ant, as the original story only featured Ant as a fictional character IN the fictional world, it did not leave Hannah’s diary!
The issue also includes a couple of pages of sketches, all focusing on Ant, which is very intriguing to see as it gives you a behind the scenes look.