Poison Ivy #43 // Review
There’s a conversation between Pam and Harley. Pam’s the mayor now and she’s got to focus on Gotham City. So she has to let Harley go. It’s not because Harley’s a woman. There was a time THAT would have been a major problem. (The U.S. didn’t have its first openly LGBTQ+ mayor of a major city until 2009.) Harley has too much additional baggage. Pam HAS to focus. Now she’s wondering whether or not it’s even worth it in Poison Ivy #43. Writer G. Willow Wilson continues to explore subtle dramatic and political complexities in another deeply engaging issue.The story is brought to page and panel by artist Jaime Infante and colorist Arif Prianto.
Nevertheless, Pam has to work. She’s got a meeting with a city contractor. He’s a plumbing tycoon who won the bid to replace aging pipes in the sewer system. As it turns out, he’s an old guy with a family history in the Gotham City sewers that goes back generations. His family is responsible for the toxic sludge that’s been emptying into the rivers. The mayor is going to take him into the sewers and have a few words with him. She’s trying not to be an ecoterrorist as mayor, but some people make it way too easy...
Wilson continues a darkly comic and deeply nuanced supernatural drama with flashes of genuine brilliance. There’s an emotional balance about the issue that resonates with the pulse of nearly perfect pacing. The path towards heroism isn’t an easy one when easy answers to complicated questions leap into view for the title character. Then there’s that quote from Richard II that pops-up out of nowhere in the sewer. And while it’s not exactly a weird occurrence for a city as dramatic as Gotham, it DOES make reference to the fall of a king and the beginning of a grueling and bloody four-part Shakespearian epic. It’s clever foreshadowing.
Infante’s art delivers an impact that feels a bit softer around the edges than longtime Ivy artist Takara’s work. The visual continuity of Prianto’s colors that keep the contrast between artists from feeling too jarring. There’s a smooth transition from issue #42. It helps that Infante’s style is as similar to Prianto’s as it is. The softer, slightly more fluid line work is well-suited to an issue that delves a bit further into emotional matters than recent issues have had a chance to explore.
The Shakespearian hollow crown quote clearly flags the Mayor of Gotham development as being a temporary thing. This is kind of bittersweet as it DOES mean the Pam is going to have a chance to explore other things in a long and winding series that shows no signs of slowing down towards the end of its fourth year. Still...it would be really cool to have Ivy as the mayor of Gotham City for a really, really long time and it’s just too bad that isn’t going to have a chance to happen. There’s so much potential in the premise that Wilson has been so clever at bringing to the page.
