GULLY THOUGHTS
By David Rondinelli

Mario Gully might be best known as the creator of the Ant series, which revolves around a young girl’s life that has been faced with much turmoil. She escapes from the day-to day hassles by writing about an alter-ego fantasy in her journal in which she re-imagines herself as an adult version of herself that fights crime under the guise of a fire red ant.

Much like the complicated life of his main character, Mario Gully has faced many struggles
when it has come to getting Ant on the shelves. Gully would soon get the chance when he
sent his work into Image Comics. At the time, Gully had tried before to get his work
published by them, but he met several rejections before the current publisher, Erick Larsen, took over.

“I always liked Image from its launch in 92. So one way or another I have always lurked around that company. I sent Ant to Image once I had the first issue done. It was in 2002. Jim Valentino was the publisher then and he turned the book down flat. That was a hard blow. Well, a couple years later once Erik Larsen took over as publisher I tried him. Keep in mind that Arcana Studios picked the book up and we sold out of issue 1 in 9 days. Once issue 3 came out, I sent it to Erik and he turned me down too. I just kept trying and he’s seen my progress. I finally won the guy over and he brought me aboard,” Gully said.

Gully had his dream come true and while at Image, he completed 11 issues of Ant. However,
he noted how things soon began to take a turn that Gully wasn’t completely prepared for.

“Keeping it real, things changed once I stopped kissing ass. I got tired of second guessing my abilities, while trying to conform my art and writing to what I thought Erik and whoever wanted. Once I got sick of it and did my own thing, things started [to change]. Erik even told me in an e-mail once that I wrote ‘too urban’ or something of that nature. Can you believe that!? If I would have set my standards at the door, things would have gone much better for me. The problem is that once people give you advice and you take it, they expect you to feel that way even though they will never say it. I was that guy that Erik Larsen brought in and wanted to mold. He says all the time how he helped me and got me guest stars like
Spawn and Savage Dragon in my book and all that. Once I starting growing up and being a man, we had friction. If Erik sends me an e-mail disrespecting me now, I just send him one back, but that wasn’t always the case,” Gully said.

Gully goes on to explain that the atmosphere had started to change as well. He felt that communication was limited and some of the other creators were not accepting on a business or personal level.

“Honestly, when I was doing great, things were great. The guys in the office were really
wonderful around seven issues in. But once I started falling behind and books started to drop in number, they got funny. Yeah, it was my fault that my books were late, but they didn’t communicate well with me. I turn[ed] in a book a week late and they said ‘Mario, we are not going to solicit a book for 2 months. You need time to catch up.’ So that means that I won’t get paid for 180 days! Image pays back end that means that you get paid once Diamond Distributors pays them, and that’s 60 days after the book hits the comic shop. That’s tough if comics are your only source of income. They did things like that, which made me feel uneasy about making a living in comics. I never felt accepted by other creators there. I really consider myself a team player. I would never talk bad about a member of my team. Not to the public anyway. I held Image and the creators high. Well, let’s just say that I feel like a fool now, because I feel like there is a lot of animosity from other guys. They believe in there heart that they are more ‘qualified’ to be considered creators at Image. They were legit ‘writers’ and ‘artists’ that either wrote books for Marvel or took some damn art lesson somewhere. So when the nigga that invented a black character with a big ass got the same attention, they didn’t like it. That’s my take on it. It’s funny; Ant outsold most of the Indy books out there. I'm talking, The Savage Dragon, Sam and Twitch, Fear Agent, Lion Tigers and Bears and the list goes on,” Gully said.

Gully went on to comment that he spent time trying to reach a solution with Image; however,
he didn’t agree with a lot of the steps that were suggested to him.

To read the rest of this story cop UVC's Feb 2008 issue, on selected comic book shops now!