Mario Gully

Ant is an comic book series that is created by Mario Gully. Ant is the story about a girl who understands adult world faster than other kids. When she gets bullied by her schoolmates, she decides to create an imaginary world on drawing paper and create a super hero, the Ant. According to Gully,

I invented Ant in jail in 1996. I was convicted of robbery and sentenced to one year and probation. The event was a turning point in my life. I used to draw portraits and hot chicks on envelopes for commissary. One day around day #6 of 358, I was depressed about where my choices in life put me. I was looking out the barred window and a single ant crawled in from the outside of my window seal. I said to myself 'Man, I wish I were an ant! Then I could crawl right out of this place and start my life all over!' Well, I couldn't pull that one off, so I decided to make a homemade comic book about it. It got around and I had a little audience with my cellmates. Really built up my confidence about drawing. That's when I realized that one day I could be a comic book artist. I sent out my first submission from the county jail. I hope one day my story can be an inspiration to anybody out there who has a dream.[1]

After the prison, he studied by himself and worked with Matt Nixon for Ant comic series. Gully's art style is influenced by Greg Capullo who worked on Batman series.

Mario Gully successfully published and sold the first Ant with J.Scott Campbell, Joe Benitez and Matt Nixon who wrote Wolverine. After the success, Ant was moved into Image Comics, a comic book publisher company. Ant became more popular while Mario Gully was improving his art skill and became better writer and artist.[1]

Mario Gully had a problem with inappropriate contents in issue #8 of Ant. In the issue #8, it contains profanity and nudity that made people to upset. Mario Gully responded that he was trying to introduce rough characters, but he went farther than he expected to be. Because of that, he decided to go through the issues and edit some of the problems. Also, Gully would make sure that the problem would not happen again in the future.[2]

While he was in Image Comics, the company announced that Ant had been cancelled because of the mutual painting style. Mario had no choice but moving to another publisher, Big City Comics. After the moving, he published Ant new series, Ant:Unleashed and work on Marvel's projects.[1]

In 2012, Mario sold his character Ant to Savage Dragon creator and Image comics founder Erik Larsen. Mario's final Ant cover appeared on a variant cover for Ant #12, which was published on June 9, 2021.

Mario Gully teamed up with Roy Thomas, a writer and a former Marvel Editor-in-chief, and published a new comic book called Kidnapped. Kidnapped is a 19th-century adventure novel that Thomas brought it into a comic book series. Kidnapped is about the sixteen year old young adult who got forced to join a ship by an uncle and go through adventure. Thomas and Gully aimed at an all age adventure story. Gully had to adapt his art style to classical art style and he successfully made old looking illustration. Thomas said he would like to reteam up with Gully again for another project.[3]

Treasure Island is a comic book that Gully worked on as an illustrator. "Contains material originally published in magazine form as Marvel Illustrated: Treasure Island, $1-6 Fifteen men on the dead man's chest-- yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!' With this sinister snatch of piratical song echoing along the English coast, the mysterious Billy Bones ushers young Jim Hawkins into an undreamed-of world of danger and adventure on the far-flung, mist-shrouded Treasure Island. And over it all looms the towering shadow of the most famous corsair of them all-- the ever-scheming, intriguing, and enigmatic Long John Silver' -- from dust jacket back"[4]

Mario Gully launched new comic book series on Kickstarter, a crowdfunding site. The new comic book, Dirty Bones, was written and illustrated by Gully and colored by Thomas Mason. The story is about a dog who caught up a world organized crime and forbidden love. Gully's crowdfund goal had aimed at $50,000. He said "This is my first big project since I created Ant." However, the funding was failed with $17,532 and 145 backers.[5]

Mario Gully's project, Original Mario Gully's very first Sketchbook, had successfully crowdfunded on Indiegogo, a crowdfunding site. Gully, his agent, and Thomas Riviere launched this project after many requests from people. The crowdfunding project includes commissions and signed prints. Gully said he is very exciting since this is his first book that contains his sketch drawings. For this funding goal, he aimed at $3,000 and it was successful with $5,002 and 152 backers.[6]