There is a lot going on in Poison Ivy Vol. 5: Human Botany, a book that starts with this series' extra-sized 25th issue and ends with a flip book. With the book’s most prominent villain defeated (bad villain, as opposed to all the good villains running around), writer G. Willow Wilson appears to be fomenting a new conflict, one that threatens to turn Ivy’s nascent team of oddballs against each other. If Botany is a little slow, that potential conflict is fantastic, and I couldn’t be happier this title has lasted as long as it has.

[Review contains spoilers]

The big headline here is that, as of the flip book finale, Poison Ivy appears to be an agent of the Grey while sidekick Janet has been tempted to work against her for the Green. There are quite some chickens coming home to roost here; indeed Ivy uprooted Janet’s life, dragged her along on Ivy’s own self-discovery journey like an unpaid intern, and then has essentially ignored her whenever Ivy doesn’t need her. Not to mention that Janet is likely in love with Ivy, and also that Harley Quinn made it clear she was willing to let Janet die in the battle against Woodrue to save Ivy. So the elements are all there for Janet to betray Ivy, especially if pushed a tad by the Parliament of Trees.

The situation is all the more interesting given that, if things shake out the way I think they might, we see Janet usurping Ivy’s role as an agent of the Green while Ivy becomes part of the fungal Grey instead. The difficulty — and I think various Swamp Things can also relate — is that when the Green’s “Bog Venus” comes to Ivy, it does so with both prescriptive orders and vague explanations, while the Grey’s Xylon is simply more personable. I’m not sure I trust it — Bog Venus is being manipulative, but the Grey is … bad, as a rule? I might be confusing the Grey with the Rot from Scott Snyder’s New 52 Swamp Thing, though I had thought they were the same. Point being, the sides taken are not what we might expect, but then again things may not be as they seem.

And none of this is even the main thrust of this story, which involves Ivy being deified by the Order of the Green Knight, a cult set up by her ex-lover Bella Garten, aka the Gardner, and the mystery of a haunted town raised from the muck. I can’t decide which plotline I enjoyed more (which is why it’s good I don’t have to choose); I like the Gardner and her weird plant animals, a Poison Ivy rogue with less mystic Green baggage, though the town with strange etchings on the walls, where something surely terrible happened, holds lots of appeal too.

Given so much going on, it’s a little surprising that Human Botany should drag every once in a while. In the fourth chapter (issue #28), there’s two pages of Ivy talking to herself while lost on the way to the disappearing, reappearing Marshview; then in that same issue, two pages of Ivy monologuing to Janet and Killer Croc, and in the final issue, another two of a wounded Ivy talking to herself. So far, and even here, Wilson writes Ivy’s voice well enough, the conversation interesting enough — variably about how human progress is an aberration or how sometimes it’s more comfortably thinking yourself a monster — that I largely give the overwriting a pass, but it’s not the first time I’ve noticed it. It’s a short trip to this becoming a flaw in the series.

Arguably DC has as many depictions of Batman as they have Batman series themselves, and that depiction often depends on the needs of the title character. From Poison Ivy’s point of view, Batman is the overbearing know-it-all, his interactions with Ivy imbued with no small hint of misogyny. That’s Wilson’s fiat, certainly in fitting with how Ivy’s past causes her to see the world, though I thought that when Ivy plead innocence for a crime, Batman’s “Bull” was uncharacteristically uncouth. Too, that the world’s greatest detective should even be misled that Ivy’s guilty of a crime she didn’t commit, and too, his abashed “… no” when she calls him on it. Here again, this isn’t the first time I’ve noticed this, and I think Wilson could probably do better, a fraught relationship between Ivy and Batman where Ivy might be right but Batman doesn’t come off a dummy.

The 25th issue that starts this book features short stories — of Batman, of Croc, of others related to Ivy — by writers besides Wilson. Among my favorites are Lumberjanes' Grace Ellis and Brian Level’s body horror story of two drug-seeking cousins during Ivy’s reign of lamia spore terror and the tale by Dan Watters and DaNi (Low, Low Woods) of Green Knight terrorism. Much like the issue about “Chuck” in Poison Ivy Vol. 3: Mourning Sickness, there’s plenty opportunity in scary stories of people affected by Ivy and I’m happy to take a tangent whenever, especially in the hands of capable creators.

With the previous volume, Poison Ivy Vol. 4: Origin of the Species, I felt G. Willow Wilson’s masterful series maybe lost a step, good in its “year one” issues but then leaving horror behind for standard superheroics. Poison Ivy Vol. 5: Human Botany is a return to spooky stuff, with a side of Ivy dealing with urban terrorism, and both of those are a trend upward. Poison Ivy’s entered the DC All In era now and I’m eager to see what’s next.

[Includes original covers, variant cover gallery, cover sketches]