Poison Ivy #24: There’s Rue for You, and Here’s Some for Me

When picking up the newest issue of Poison Ivy, it’s hard not to think of Hamlet. Jessica Fong’s haunting cover, depicting Ivy’s corpse surrounded by flowers in Slaughter Swamp, recalls John Everett Millais’ 1852 portrait of floating, floral, doomed Ophelia. But as Ivy herself narrates in Poison Ivy #18 (and keeps reminding readers), “nothing in the realm of the Green stays dead.” 

Ophelia by John Everett Millais (1852)

The same is largely true for superhero comics as a whole: supervillains and superheroes are functionally immortal. So when Ivy dies in her girlfriend’s arms at the end of the previous issue, it’s with the reader’s experiential knowledge that her death—dragged out over six issues—won’t last. And indeed, she’s back long before the issue’s end. While the cover teases a funereal conclusion to Poison Ivy’s second year, the meat of this “season finale” issue is far from maudlin. For the most part, writer G. Willow Wilson focuses on tying up narrative loose ends in an optimistic conclusion that stops just short of a swooning cursive “The End” title card. In this issue, Wilson also finally mentions the Grey — DC’s elemental force associated with fungi, which the series previously seemed to conflate with the Green — the elemental force of plant-life. Given how central and important this distinction is, one wishes Wilson had made it far sooner, but it’s good to see it made all the same. 

Returning artist Haining offers a visual experience befitting Wilson’s script: her work is by turns devastating, jubilant, sexy, and hopeful. Some pages are borderline transcendent. Her compositions continue to be technically masterful and often wildly inventive, embracing organic shapes for this fundamentally nature-centric series. Together, colorist Arif Prianto and letterer Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou continue to give the series a coherent and verdant visual identity amidst changing artists. 

Along with a lot of wrapping up, Poison Ivy #24 sees a massive return to the status quo on multiple fronts. It’s a hopeful and charming ending, to be sure, and leaves Ivy’s character development intact. However, on other fronts, one can’t help but worry that the series has stripped itself of its core identity in the name of a clean slate. This “back to basics” ending also draws further attention to the illusory nature of change in cape comics, leaving us to consider how much a death-obsessed comic can say in a genre where death often has little meaning.