Poison Ivy #25: A Beautiful But Half-Baked Buffet

On its front cover, featuring Ivy stuffing herself on lamb chops (a callback to the series’ first cover where Ivy gnawed steak), Poison Ivy #25 sells itself as an “All-You-Can-Eat Special.” And while this anthology offers a smorgasbord of stories by a veritable who’s who of comics and queer fiction, not everything tastes as good as it looks. 

The frame story by series creators G. Willow Wilson, Marcio Takara, and Arif Prianto seemingly sets up the rest of the anthology, as Ivy assigns tasks to her supporting cast. Marcio Takara’s artwork, colored by Arif Prianto, has a sense of humor and warmth that makes the anthology immediately inviting. However, some of the stories set up ultimately don’t play out, while other stories aren’t really introduced. Perhaps a sign of under-editing, the result is an anthology that feels disjointed. All stories are beautifully lettered by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou, whose consistency gives the anthology slightly more coherence.

The first real story, “Beneath the Surface” (Joanne Starer, Haining, and Ivan Plascencia), is a throwback story where Batman and Ivy face off in a greenhouse. Joanne Starer’s central premise, that Ivy’s scent reminds Batman of his parents’ graves, is an interesting hint of character work in an otherwise fight-forward comic. Haining’s dynamic posing, trippy horror visuals, creative page compositions, and Ivan Plascencia’s bold color choices make “Beneath the Surface” the most visually stunning part of the collection.

The following story, “Mushroom Hunters” (Grace Ellis, Brian Level, Arif Prianto) is likewise a throwback, this time focused on the lamia fungus infecting two cousins in Wyoming. This isn’t a story that digs deep into environmental issues, though it gestures vaguely at them (one cousin is a climate researcher). Rather, writer Grace Ellis reimagines Poison Ivy’s fungal horror as a stoner road-trip comedy with modest success. Brian Level’s artwork masterfully combines the script’s horror and comedy elements into wonderfully weird (sometimes nasty) compositions, which Arif Prianto’s color schemes help tie to the rest of the series. 

One of the only stories to (albeit barely) tie into the frame narrative, “Boots & Handbag” (Gretchen Felker-Martin, Atagun Ilhan, Deborah Vilhaz) sees Killer Croc set out to investigate a town that has suddenly appeared in Slaughter Swamp—though he never really investigates. Instead, Gretchen Felker-Martin’s plot focuses on Croc fighting off a pair of poachers, recasting Slaughter Swamp as the Florida Everglades. Like “Beneath the Surface,” “Boots & Handbag” is essentially one long fight scene. While Atagun Ilhan has a strong sense of action, panels are generally quite small, leaving the art no space to breathe. Deborah Vilhaz’s colors give the scene a wonderful “neon sunset” look, but at times the absence of lighter values make the compositions a touch muddy. In the case of “Boots & Handbag,” there is seemingly no underlying narrative either in relation to Croc himself or larger social concerns like poaching and swamp ecology. 

The anthology’s final story, “The Pyrophyte” (Dan Watters, DaNi, Brad Simpson), is an intriguing character piece about a British (like his author Dan Watters) ecoterrorist bombing trees in Gotham because he feels a spiritual connection to Poison Ivy. While it may not tie well into the frame tale (a woman who might be Janet appears in the background twice), “The Pyrophyte” does gesture towards the comic’s next arc in an intriguing way. Watters’ premise is also one of the anthology’s strongest, exploring how a normal ecoterrorist might see Ivy—a superpowered ecoterrorist—as a quasi-religious figure. It’s also a delight seeing Watters reunited with DaNi, who previously worked together on Arkham City: The Order of the World. Colorist Brad Simpson’s moody colors seem quite inspired by Dave Stewart’s on that other series. While this story feels firmly about Ivy, in many ways it feels more like a return to the gritty-yet-empathetic world of Arkham City: The Order of the World than a natural extension of the Poison Ivy series.