Poison Ivy # 48 // Review
Pamela’s dreaming of a time before time. She’s thinking about a time when we were all dust. Earth was a planet not meant for a single dominant life form. And now things are so far out of balance that there needs to be some kind of intervention. She’s trying to bring that about in Poison Ivy # 48. Writer G. Willow Wilson closes-out her fourth year with Dr. Pamela Isley in another issue that is brough to page and panel by artist Marcio Takara and colorist Arif Prianto. The end of the fourth year of the series might be a milestone, but Wilson and company are definitely leading-into the big 50th issue at the end of the Bad Seeds crossover event.
Pam is using prehistoric plants. She’s seeded them all across Gotham City. They’re rapidly terraforming the environment. Humidity is growing. Oxygen saturation in the atmosphere could go back to levels not seen since the Late Cretaceous period. So everything should theoretically be okay for the plants. There’s a problem, though: tje Parliament of Trees still wants her dead for the death of one of their own. Poison Ivy has killed the Bog Venus. She’s going to have to face the consequences.
Dr. Isley has rather a lot going on. The problem is...even with everything that she’s got going on as Mayor of Gotham City and Parliament of Trees and everything else...one would think that she would have understood the basic problems of being an air-breathing mammal dealing with heavy oxygen. That feels a little silly. Wilson DOES allow for a remarkably vivid look at Pamela’s psyche and how warped her judgment has become four years into the series. Her lack of foresight is understandable given how unraveled she’s become in the course of the series.
The 48th issue in the series is an extreme close-up on Pamela and her psycho-emotional state near the end of the crossover event. Takara and Prianto do a beautifully vivid job of subtly painting the shades of emotion, desperation and overall fatigue across the face and of the title character. It’s a heartbreaking look at the inner life of someone caught between worlds--someone forced to deal with life as a cross between plant and animal. She’s absolutely gorgeous, but she’s totally imbalanced and lost between two major kingdoms. Takara and Prianto do a brilliant job of developing an emotional complexity behind Pamela’s plight.
The series DOES seem to be winding-down...though Wilson has said that she’s going to “ride the bus until the wheels fall off” with Poison Ivy. Given how good the series has been, let’s just hope that the wheels aren’t falling off any time soon. There haven’t been any future issues of Poison Ivy solicited in the recent past. It seems like it could be a while before Pamela returns at the end of the Bad Seeds event if nothing else. Time will tell. It’s been one hell of a ride over the course of the past 4 years. It’ll be interesting to see where Pamela’s journey continues...IF she survives the crossover...
