Ant #1

Ant #1

Image Comics 2021

By Erik Larson

Flats by Mike Toris

Lettered by Jack Morelli

“ANT: WHO SHE IS AND HOW SHE CAME TO BE!”

Erik Larsen takes on a whole new wall-crawler! ANT’s epic adventure kicks off with this all-new origin issue!

One good thing I will say off the bat is that it’s been a long time since the Ant was on shelves and I have the original run so I’m thrilled that it’s back. Not sure we needed an all-new origin issue but I guess this is a reboot and it’s now Erik’s interpretation of the character so let’s sit back and enjoy the ride. We get a solid look at Hannah growing up and the circumstances that shaped her into the woman she’ll become as well as her father and that’s a smart man who as a scientist isn’t as reliable as a young woman needs her father to be. It’s an incredibly solid opening issue, it catches the readers’ attention and leaves you with the desire to see and know more. From a writing standpoint it’s a solid book with great characters and a strong premise and it certainly brings us a look at a heroine of a different sort and a fairly young idealistic one at that.

I like the way that this is being told. The story & plot development we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented exceptionally well. The character development that we see through the dialogue, the character interaction as well as how we see them act and react to the situations and circumstances which they encounter really does wonders in fleshing out their base personalities. The pacing is excellent and as it takes us through the pages revealing the story the more we want to see and learn. It does a magnificent job in showing how Erik’s treatment of the characters follows Mario’s original vision and it’s great to see.

I greatly appreciate the way that we see this being structured and how the layers within the story emerge and grow. I like how we see the layers open up the avenues to be explored and how some start and others have the opportunity to be visited over time as they add all this great depth, dimension and complexity to the story. How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is impeccably achieved.

I’m not as thrilled with the interiors here as I was hoping I’d be. You can see how Erik’s style has evolved over the years and this really deserves to be that much sharper, cleaner and crisp than we see it. Just a personal thing on my part because there are times the people look a little unfinished to me. We could also use more backgrounds because when they are utilised they do wonders in expanding and enhancing the moments. They also work well within the composition of the panels in bringing out the depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the story. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a talented eye for storytelling. The colours look packed in like a tattoo would be, saturated with few variations in tones it would be nice to see how different shades of red in the costume would look for sure.

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While I may nitpick at times, it’s part of what I do, I wouldn’t trade this book for all the tea in China. It’s a great character and it has so much unlimited potential and I’m looking forward to seeing how this is going to be explored. A whole new generation is going to be introduced to this character and fall in love like I did and it’s one of the greatest things about reading comics. I think this is a debut that everyone should pick up and give it a go because you’ll find yourself enamoured with Hanna and the Ant.