The second volume of G. Willow Wilson’s Poison Ivy, while still infused with body horror, tried to veer toward the topical. But bits like Ivy putting lie to “Gwendolyn Caltrope”’s wellness empire felt too on the nose, less clever than perhaps was hoped. The Ivy series is of course always going to have an environmental bent, but I’m glad to see Poison Ivy Vol. 3: Mourning Sickness to be more of a return to form — less satire, more plant monsters and Ivy being self-destructive.

Poison Ivy has always been a conundrum — someone ostensibly working to save the world, though unconcerned about the collateral damage to do it. The question of hero versus villain has only become more thorny both in the character increasingly teamed with Harley Quinn (herself having undergone a meta villain-to-hero transition) and with Ivy getting her own series. Mourning Sickness wrestles with this mightily, as sidekick Janet, once an everyday HR rep, now finds herself hitting Batman, and all that stands between Gotham and a zombie apocalypse are “villains” Ivy, Killer Croc, and Solomon Grundy. It’s no wonder Batman’s mostly fighting new villains these days; the old ones are at this point essentially good guys.