This June, Erik Larsen will be releasing the long awaited 12th issue of Ant, a story originally created by Mario Gully. This one-shot finale will finish the superheroine’s story, but that’s not going to be the end of her. In fact, Image Comics recently announced that Larsen will be launching a new Ant series this summer complete with a new origin story. Not much is known about this new series yet except the following:
In this upcoming Ant series, Larsen will breathe new life into the character and expand upon her place and identity in the Image Universe.
Talking about the journey of Ant being first brought to comics and now continuing her legacy, Larsen said:
I’ve been invested in Ant ever since Mario Gully initially pitched the book at Image back when I was the publisher. 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.
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.
I thought Ant was a natural fit in the Spawn/Savage Dragon Universe. And now that I’ve moved on from Spawn, I can at last devote my full attention to Ant’s adventures.
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. 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 launch from Image Comics on August 25 with 4 covers by Larsen.
