Image Comics has announced that Erik Larsen will launch a new ongoing Ant series in August, sharing a new origin story for the character he bought from her creator, Mario Gully.
Back in March, Larsen announced he had obtained the rights to Ant. Previously Ant has been published by both Image and Arcana Comics. Larsen helped bring the series to Image and also helped out with the initial storyline, but it was never completed. It’s been 14 years since the last issue of Ant appeared, but Larsen will release Ant #12 in June, which brings the first volume to a close.
“I’ve been invested in Ant ever since Mario Gully initially pitched the book at Image back when I was the publisher,” said Larsen. “Mario and I threw a lot of ideas back and forth about how to make the character work at Image and the more I thought about the possibilities—the more I liked the character. I even plotted and laid out a final Ant chapter for Mario’s run on the book, which I ended up completing myself as the finale to her initial series.”
When Gully decided to sell his character, he approached Larsen to purchase her. “Buying characters from other people is not something I typically do. In fact, it’s not something I do at all. But Ant intrigued me. I’d put so much thought into the character and her series that I couldn’t help myself. Mario named his price and I paid it,” Larsen said.
The Savage Dragon creator brought the character back to Image when he was writing Spawn with Todd McFarlane, using her in a story featuring Spawn and Savage Dragon.
“Not since the debut of Savage Dragon have I started a series with more preparation and more plans. This one has been percolating in the back of my brain for more than a decade,” Larsen said. “Mario’s book was all over the place. There were five writers over 11 issues, all pushing and pulling in different directions, there were numerous flashbacks and glimpses into her past and it never quite gelled in any coherent way. This new book is essentially a clean slate. It’s far more linear and straightforward. I tell her origin in the first issue and we follow her adventures from that point on. It touches on events from her original series and makes sense of it all. It’s the book I had hoped the Ant book would be. It’s a chance to realize her potential at long last.”
Ant #1 will arrive in comic shops with four different covers by Larsen, which will also come in a “retro trade dress” variety:
The first issue arrives Aug. 25.
