Review: Poison Ivy Vol. 7: Amuse-bouche hardcover/paperback (DC Comics)

I admire G. Willow Wilson’s ability to make multiple genres feel at home in Poison Ivy, even as I enjoy some more than others. That genre-switching is on display in Poison Ivy Vol. 7: Amuse-bouche, what starts among the four regular issues from perhaps the book’s most horrific and then moves to metaphysics reminiscent of Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing, and then finally what seems to me the setup for some more pointed social commentary, à la Poison Ivy Vol. 2: Unethical Consumption.

That comparison is worrisome, as Unethical Consumption was among my least favorite Poison Ivy volumes so far. As Ivy heads into its first-ever in-series crossover event, I’d like to see this title on an upswing. But Wilson’s Poison Ivy still remains psychologically complex, among the smartest books DC currently produces and the nearest site of Vertigo within the mainstream DCU. Even if every chapter doesn’t hit me with the same power, I’m always impressed after reading.

[Review contains spoilers]

After two volumes of build-up, Poison Ivy now knows sidekick Janet-from-HR betrayed her to the Green, and Ivy’s dragging Janet out into the woods ostensibly to kill her. It was a heck of a cliffhanger at the end of Poison Ivy Vol. 6: A Death in Marshview and it makes for a harrowing few opening pages. Wilson’s Ivy is firmly, perhaps unavoidably, in the realm of antihero, but often the best parts of the book are when we’re reminded that Ivy is by nature a villain, having killed with impunity and given to do so again.

[See the latest DC trade solicitations.]

Various factors intercede that appeal to the better angels of Ivy’s nature: Janet, already dying of poison, falls unconscious, moving Ivy from anger to sympathy; in a confrontation with the Green’s Bog Venus, Ivy begins to suspect Janet’s illness and betrayal might both have been influenced by the Green. It’s only just the first regular issue, but we’ve already moved head-spinningly quickly from Ivy as the site of horror, potentially murdering her closest ally, to Ivy and Janet up against a marauding muck monster, with each of them taking rather gory vengeance.

Ivy will be ever unchanging in the grand scheme — Wilson’s series will end, eventually, and another writer will come along to use Ivy as a two-bit rogue in the background of a Batman story.¹ To an extent, then, Ivy is really Janet’s series — Janet, whose descent into antiheroism is punctuated by moments like when she decided to punch Batman, and also here, I think, when in her rage at the Bog Venus, she stabs the creature violently, repeatedly. Not too long after, Janet’s developing plant powers; though assuredly there’s no life for Janet outside Ivy, the real tension of the series is how far Janet will fall and what she’ll become before the book is over.

Those powers develop in a curious interstitial chapter, somewhere between Swamp Thing’s “Rite of Spring” and an episode of Hannibal, as Ivy feeds Janet pieces of the Bog Venus with euphoric results. It’s one of those “peaceful issues” that Wilson has peppered the book with, like Ivy’s cuddle session with Peter Undine in Marshview, though as Ivy reminds us, peace isn’t an indication of security, but rather “it’s there to prepare you for what comes next.” Janet wants to make love to Ivy here when Ivy was all too ready to murder her in just the last issue, demonstrating that even as Janet has survived adversity and come out stronger, never does that mean any of the characters are emotionally wiser. (Helpfully, despite the bucolic setting, there’s a snake on the table.)

That said, I did wonder if Wilson overlooked at least a bit of Ivy’s growth going into the book’s finale. No sooner did Ivy learn a lesson about acting rashly, given her treatment of Janet, than Ivy kills in broad daylight a Gotham PD tech flunky who insults her. Ivy’s goal is to get on commissioner Vandal Savage’s good side, but her rash action lands her in jail instead. Even if Ivy would have undoubtedly sinned again, I thought this was awful quick, maybe more a sign of where Wilson needs Ivy for the crossover than Ivy’s logical response.

Artist Davide Gianfelice takes over from Marcio Takara for those final two issues. Gianfelice matches some of Takara’s artful sketchiness, but with an absurdity — like when Savage punches Ivy — that I found too cartoony.

Wilson presents Savage as another one of this series' bad bosses, followed by a depiction of a clearly over-the-top surveillance state in Gotham. Obviously this is stuff that warrants lampooning, but I don’t find Wilson’s satire by way of exaggeration quite as strong as when this book is into body horror and moral quandaries. I’m curious if there will be any room for horror in what I expect will be more than one pending issue that sends up the political process, Poison Ivy by way of Parks and Rec or Veep.

DC includes the Poison Ivy 2025 Annual at the beginning of this book, and moreover, thankfully, the Poison Ivy/Swamp Thing: Feral Trees special, which might otherwise have gone uncollected (I appreciate teaming Wilson and artist Mike Perkins, but I do wonder if a single-issue one-shot made back sufficient money for DC). Neither of these have anything to do with Poison Ivy’s here and now, though each arrive at the same thematic point: in the face of the “earth above all else” Green, Ivy’s not ready to give up on humanity just yet.

It’s a contradiction, one that I think also plays out in the series itself, that ecoterrorist Ivy, who doesn’t hesitate to kill or maim in the name of the environment, also maintains friendships and isn’t ready to eliminate humanity altogether. Ivy’s got “the Aquaman problem,” neither fitting in either of the worlds in which she belongs, and the whole of this volume rather seems a move toward humanity when the last two books were leaning the other way.

I’ll take the beginning of G. Willow Wilson’s Poison Ivy Vol. 7: Amuse-bouche over the end, but I’d set all of it as DC’s best series outside some of the Absolutes. It’s maybe too cute to call Amuse-bouche an appetizer, since I venture the next one is also going to consist of preludes to “Bad Seeds,” but at this volume being four “transitory” issues and two specials, I appreciate at least DC being honest about it. Eager for the next as always.

[Includes original and variant covers]

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1. See Clayface. Or Man-Bat. Or Catman.  ↩︎

Rating 3.0