Poison Ivy #34 // Review
Janet from H.R. is sick. She’s having difficulty keeping-up with her guide--a well-dressed man named Peter who has a large flower where his head should be. They’re both on the run. She’s slowing him-down and she knows it. She wants him to go on without her. He can’t let that happen in Poison Ivy #34. Writer G. Willow Wilson continues a breathtakingly brilliant run with a prominent anti-hero in another issue brought to page and panel by Marcio Takara. Color comes to the page courtesy of colorist Arif Prianto. It’s a powerful turning point that is well-executed on every level.
Meanwhile, Poison Ivy is confronting those who look to do harm. She’s going to try not to let that happen, but this IS a small army of police in tactical gear carrying semiautomatic weapons. If Poison Ivy is going to be able to survive, she’s going to need all the help that she didn’t ask for. Peter’s going to need to ask for some help on her behalf. So’s Janet from H.R. With any luck, they’ll be able to scrape together enough people to counteract a small army of police. Stranger things have happened.
Once again, Wilson shows herself to be dizzyingly witty and sharp in another walk with an anti-hero. There’s a great deal of complexity and insight into the nature of responsibility in an issue that explores quite a bit around the edges of morality. One of the more clever aspects of the script to this particular issue is Wilson’s ability to show criminality reforming of its own volition based on a deeper understanding of the human condition that comes from simply...living. Supervillains aren’t often given this much of a chance at being this complicated. Wilson’s doing some deeply moving stuff with this series.
Takara focusses on the individual elements of the drama between characters. There are quite a few moments that could have opened-up into larger shots as Peter is trying to get help from a large group of ecoterrorists and Ivy is getting the hell beaten out of her by heavily armed and armored police. Through it all, Takara keeps to the tight shots that emphasize human emotion in the individual caught-up in circumstances beyond their control. Prianto does some staggeringly sharp work with the coloring throughout the issue, but particularly where it is rendering Pam’s illness. The pallor in her face and the red splotches around her eyes give an overwhelmingly profound sense of just what’s killing her from within.
And then there’s the fact that Wilson is going to be working with Black Cat for Marvel by the end of the summer. Wow. Wilson is SO good with the anti-hero. With any luck, she’ll be able to work her distinctive genius on Black Cat the way that she’s working it with Poison Ivy. It would be so cool to have Wilson working the anti-hero angle for both Marvel and DC at the same time long-term.
