Poison Ivy #45 // Review
The mayor is upset. There was a man who came to her home in a bat costume to deliver an ultimatum to her. The mayor in question is the mayor of Gotham City. The man in the bat costume was...Batman. Mayor Isley is understandably upset in Poison Ivy #45. Writer G. Willow Wilson continues a thoroughly enjoyable mayoral storyline with Pamela in an issue brought to page and panel by artist Leandro Fernandez. Color comes to the page courtesy of Arif Prianto. Things continue to falter for Pam in a story that leads-in to the Batman: Bad Seeds Gotham City-wide publishing event.
Pam calls Police Commissioner Savage to her office. She hasn’t been happy with him and she’s going to let him know about it. The only problem is that he’s one of the last people in city government that she can truly trust outside of her inner circle. To make matters worse, she is being threatened by another powerful magical entity from the Parliament of Trees and things aren’t going particularly well with the only powerful magical entity that she can seem to trust either. It’s looking increasingly as though Poison Ivy is beginning to find herself totally alone.
Wilson has done such a good job of rendering the inner intellectual complexity of Pamela that it’s kind of heartbreaking to see her fall into more of a traditional supervillain role. It’s not like Wilson hasn’t given Pamela perfectly good reasons for returning to the darker side of things. It’s been a pretty well-articulated path, in fact. It just feels a bit disappointing to see Poison Ivy take the real political power that’s been given to her down such a dark path. It’s kind of jarring to see the thoughtful, vulnerable character from say...even as recently as last year, turn into someone much more sinister.
Fernandez’s work lacks the style and nuance of regular series artist Marcio Takara. Emotions tend to be amplified in a way that doesn’t embrace the subtlety of the more sophisticated ends of Wilson’s script. This isn’t as much of a problem as it might have been in earlier issues that were more driven by emotional drama. As things unravel for Ivy, the action in the 45th issue feel much more like traditional horror than much of the rest of the series has been thus far. So Fernandez’s are fits the script well without delivering the kind of style and substance that the series has largely been known for.
Matt Fraction is working on the big Batman Bad Seeds crossover event with Wilson. Wilson’s work has been consistently brilliant. Fraction’s quality has been a bit more spotty over the years. If Fraction can keep up with Wilson, it might actually be kind of fun, which is rare for a big crossover event. The basic premise, officially opens in August sounds like it could be a lot of fun. There’s at least one more issue of Poison Ivy to set-up for the crossover next month.
