Twisted times indeed.
Creative Staff:
Story: Amy Chu
Art: Robson Rocha, Julie Ferreira, Ethan Van Sciver, Jay Leisten
Colors: Ulises Arreola
What They Say:
Catwoman and Poison Ivy-reunited! As the body count rises at the Gotham Botanical Gardens labs, Ivy needs Selina’s help to solve the puzzle…a mystery that seems to involve Ivy’s blossoming children!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
This Poison Ivy series has certainly had its moments and I’ve enjoyed its kind of languid pacing overall because it’s not all about fights and quips but more about Ivy herself and what she’s trying to accomplish. Taking her connection to the Green and her science to the next level with the sporelings was certainly creepy as hell but you can see her twisted view of the world causing her to want to repopulate the Earth with a race more compliant with nature considering what mankind has done. That’s a whole other debate of course but within her worldview it made a lot of sense. Her early attempt here definitely has its issues but a lot of it stems from her being distracted by guests and murders at work.
With this issue, things move along well enough but has an odd feeling since the Mann’s aren’t involved in the art and we get four other artists mixing it up here, which removes the consistent element that it really needs. Ivy’s certainly not pleased by Darshan’s appearance at her place and she’s not exactly keen on Selina either since she’s just talking about how Harley would view all of this. And with those two not talking these days since their recent issues, well, it’s prodding a sore spot to be sure. Selina does serve as a kind of awkward peacemaker amid all of this and gets everyone on the same page with Ivy explaining what’s happened and filling in some of the blanks with Darshan about it all as well since she has to be wary of Ivy to some degree.
All of it comes back to the stolen research that she intends to get back and Selina and Darshan are drawn into helping, especially since Darshan is just riding this wave since getting off could be the death of him. There’s a decent series of minor reveals as they go after the location where they believe the research has been brought and it digs into some neat stuff with another presence in the Green that Ivy is drawn to. That an entire replicated lab is there and things have gone pear shaped in a big way is no surprise at all but it’s the scale of it that’s frightening, both for the reader and for Ivy as she sees how her research has been used. She’s always been close to the edge and easy to push over it and something like this has her ready to just bring everything down. It’s a good reminder of her ability and what she can do but it’s hampered by the shifting artwork and an almost rushed feeling with the pacing of the book.
In Summary:
With two more installments to go you can pretty much see how things are going to shake out at this point. The book does some decent things along the way here and time with Selina and Ivy is always welcome, but the two have been apart for some time so there’s a disconnect as Ivy has wanted less and less to do with mankind for some time. There’s a lot of interesting things to explore with that concept but we’re too tied to the usual conventions of superhero/villain storytelling here. This is a book that I keep thinking would work better as Vertigo type story to really go all in with it as we see how Ivy wants to use her abilities and science to evolve to the next stage. There are good moments to be had here but it’s a weak whole when combined with the uneven artwork due to so many talents involved in it.
Grade: C+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: March 20th, 2016
MSRP: $2.99
