Poison Ivy vol. 3: Mourning Sickness

Ivy is now back in Gotham and with the woman she loves, Harley Quinn.  While things are going great for her, now comes the hard task of settling back into her former hometown.  Which means that she’s going to have to make nice with Batman and find a new place to live.  One of these things turns out to be a lot easier than the other, and it’s the one that doesn’t put her on the path of a real estate developer building condos for the super-rich with a human-altering byproduct.  These things are nothing, however, compared to the imminent zombie plague descending on Gotham as all of the people Ivy unknowingly infected with her lamia spores are now being drawn back to the source.

Vol. 2 of this series was a step up from vol. 1, and that upward trend continues here.  Writer G. Willow Wilson finds some interesting angles to pursue with these stories, continuing the title’s environmentalist and humanist bent without becoming preachy.  There’s also a great addition to the title’s supporting cast with Killer Croc who comes off as endearingly dumb, reflective, and even sympathetic here.  Not that Janet From HR has been forgotten, as she winds up starting a love triangle of sorts here and clubbing the Dark Knight like he was a common mugger among other things here.

Regular artist Marcio Takara continues to do solid work on this title, having settled into making its plant-centric look fascinatingly weird and horrifying as needed.  We also get a couple guest artists in the first issue – including legendary Bat-artist Kelley Jones – and newcomer Luana Vecchio closing out the volume in style.  The end of vol. 3 also features the return of someone who could be described as Ivy’s archnemesis, and while it feels a bit too soon for them to come back, the work Wilson and the artists have done here is strong enough to make me want to see where they’re going to take this new development in vol. 4.