Ant (character)

Ant (Hannah Washington) is a comic book superhero, created by Mario Gully. She first appeared in the eponymous series Ant #1 (February 2004), published by Arcana Studio.

Ant has also appeared in the Image Comics series Ant, Savage Dragon and Spawn.

The Ant comic was published by Arcana Studio in February 2004. The creator and artist, Mario Gully, has stated that the concept of Ant was created while he was incarcerated in 1996 for attempted armed robbery. Gully says that one day he was looking through a barred cell window and a tiny ant crawled in from the outside. He later vowed to change his life and make something out of himself. He then created Ant.

The first volume, published by Arcana Studio and titled "Days Like These", ran for 4 issues before moving to Image Comics. Gully worked with co-writer Matt Nixon in the first volume.

The original Arcana miniseries followed 8-year-old Hannah Washington, a lonely young girl continually tormented and bullied at school. Her father, apparently an accountant—and later on, a blue-collar employee—by profession, is made a suspect in an armed robbery and is taken into custody. To escape the harsh realities of her life, she writes in her diary stories of an alter-ego: an adult version of herself who is a superhero known as Ant.

Hannah appears to know more about the world than she ought to and often has the personality of an emotionally unstable young adult, and her new principal takes interest in her as a result.

She ends up unintentionally dropping her diary, and it is read and returned by her friend Stephen, who later on appears as "Gadget Man" in Ant's Cockroach battle, the events of which are followed whenever Hannah's diary is read or written into.

Hannah's father was released from custody but eventually, his home gets raided as the authorities apparently have the evidence they need to put him away. Hannah is found foaming at the mouth, having a seizure on the floor.