Poison Ivy vol. 4: Mourning Sickness

There are characters who are left in a bad way at the end of a previous volume to generate suspense.  Then there’s where Pamela Isley was left at the end of vol. 3 after her nemesis Jason Woodrue crawled out of her ribcage after regenerating there following his defeat in vol. 1.  With the Floronic Man back and badder than ever, and Ivy on the brink of death, that means it’s the perfect time for the narrative to flash back and show us how Pamela Isely became the antihero we’ve come to know and love.

I kid a little here because making a hard break from the cliffhanger of vol. 3 to tell a completely different story is certainly A Choice that was made by writer G. Willow Wilson.  I imagine monthly readers of “Poison Ivy” were more put off by this as it took four months for the action to resume.  Or maybe they weren’t as this modern take on Ivy’s origin is still pretty solid.  Featuring more solid work from regular artist Marcio Takara, we see how she fell under Woodrue’s smoothly manipulative charms, leading to experimentation that produced unexpected results and a Bat-villain with a cause that wasn’t afraid to sacrifice a few humans to achieve it.  Wilson manages to blend modern social ideals seamlessly into this while also giving us a surprise or two that will likely be touched upon in future stories.

As for the arc that picks up from the previous volume’s cliffhanger… it’s alright.  It’s honestly kind of hard to get worked up about the threat Woodrue presents after Ivy ate him alive (or dead, really) in their first encounter in this series.  Still, it does have some slick art from Haining that gives a lot of the conflict an appreciably psychedelic vibe, and the supporting cast – Janet From HR, Killer Croc, Solomon Grundy, and Harley Quinn – provide winning support.  This arc also ties a bow on the whole Lamia business from the title’s start and feels like it could’ve functioned as a series finale as well.  That it doesn’t is still interesting to me as now we’ll get to see where Ivy decides to go with a fresh new (narrative) lease on life.