Written by Angela Rairden
Poison Ivy finally has her own title again and I couldn’t be happier about it! Written by G. Willow Wilson (the same writer who created Marvel’s Kamala Khan!), this is a deadlier version of Pamela Isley than we’ve seen in a long time. After obtaining god-like powers, only to have those powers stripped from her, Ivy’s feeling less like herself than ever before. Add to that the fact that she’s still processing her complicated break-up from Harley Quinn, and we have a version of Ivy that just wants to watch the world burn.
Except, it isn’t exactly the world that she wants to burn. It’s humankind.
Ever the environmentalist, Ivy has decided that humans are a “invasive species” that need to be wiped from the face of the planet before the damage they’ve done to it is deemed irreversible. Feeling she has nothing left to lose, Ivy has set out on a journey that she feels certain she won’t return from. A fact that she’s okay with as long as it means that she takes all of humankind with her.
Infected with ophiocordyceps lamia, a type of parasitic and deadly mushroom, Ivy’s plan is to spread the lamia across the globe, infecting agriculture centers and distribution warehouses around the world. Such a move will trigger a mass extinction of humankind as nature reclaims the Earth as its own. Ivy just hopes that she can see her plan through to completion before she either succumbs to the lamia herself, or is stopped by the Bat-Family or the Green Man.
Beautiful but deadly, Ivy is a force to be reckoned with within the pages of this comic, even as she admits that she can no longer control or fuse with the Green as she once could. Still, she claims that her actions are motivated by love, even as she quips that one “has to be really good at being this bad”.
Featuring internal art by Marcio Takara (Wonder Woman, All-New Wolverine), Poison Ivy is a beautifully depicted comic. Takara’s art has an expressive, realistic look to it that carefully catches every nuanced emotion that Ivy is feeling on each page. From cold disinterest to satisfied smirk, Ivy’s emotions are what draws the reader through this comic just as they have led Ivy down the path that she’s currently walking. Furthermore, the two-page spread near the center of the issue that depicts Ivy’s last fight/encounter with a teary-eyed Harley are especially well-done, with colorist Arif Prianto’s color palette truly setting the scene.
Aside from wonderful internal art, Poison Ivy also promises a number of gorgeous variant covers by acclaimed artists such as Warren Louw, Jim Lee, Sozomaika, Artgerm, Jenny Frison, and J. Scott Campbell, just to name a few. Because I love Poison Ivy almost as much as I love Harley Quinn, one of the guys at my local comic bookstore was nice enough to go through each issue’s variant covers and order me one of each of the ones that I wanted. If you’re a fan of pretty art, I suggest that you do the same. Furthermore, if you’re a fan of driven, well-paced writing, I also suggest that you pick up a copy to read, because it seems unlikely that Ivy’s plan is going to unfold as seamlessly as she hopes it will.
Angela “LaLa” Rairden is an avid fan of comic books, Star Wars, and most things nerdy. A cosplayer, she loves to attend comic cons dressed as her favorite fictional characters, particularly Harley Quinn. Although her day job is at a grocery store, writing has always been her true calling. She lives in the Pacific Northwest, where she is currently writing her first novel.