It was supposed to be a perfectly casual excursion to a wellness retreat with the wealthy in Southern California. How could Pamela have known that her brief flirtation with near-total genocide of the human race might have had some sort of monstrous side effect? More importantly: will she get back to Gotham City in one piece? Writer G. Willow Wilson explores these questions and more in Poison Ivy #12. The big action-horror climax of a multi-issue story is brought to the page by artist Marcio Takara. Color shoots powerfully across the page courtesy of Arif Prianto.

The lamia spores that Poison Ivy was planning to infect the world with were a lot more powerful than anything that she could have expected. Of course, given her genius and her extensive background with insanely dangerous flora...it really shouldn’t come as any kind of a surprise to her. Now, she’s up against an aggregated construct of the lamia spores that is going to give her one hell of a challenge. They’ve come a long way from what she was dealing with back in Gotham...they’ve mutated wildly in an evolution that threatens to overpower even her. 

Wilson has kind of backed herself into a corner with a big, epic battle sequence. She gives that battle its time and then slides into the subtle, psychological horror that seems to be her native habitat with Ivy. Wilson’s dialogue is as sharp, crisp, and brilliant as ever. The inner journey of Poison Ivy has come a LONG way in 12 issues. Wilson is wise to find a way to take a look at the anti-heroine’s progress towards straight-ahead heroism while advancing the story towards her eventual return to Gotham City. It’s cool to see it all come together with such a balanced sense of action, drama, and horror. With the sci-fi bleeding into the interpersonal, Wilson is working brilliantly with both psychological and supernatural horror.

Takara and Prianto are given the wheel in the action sequences. Wilson shows a great deal of faith in Takara to deliver the punch for an issue that pits a dark, plant-based anti-hero against a darker plant-based monster villain. Look at the page in just the wrong way, and it all comes across as being a pretty green mess. Takara does a really good job of defining the action in and around it all in a way that brings it all so vividly to the page. There’s a real feeling of intensity...both in action and drama as the series rounds out its first year.

An issue like #12 was bound to happen eventually. Wilson and company need to balance out the moody supernatural horror with the occasional moment of action intensity that blows over into deeply reflective inner emotional drama. The story was building to this sort of climax over the course of the past eleven issues. It’s nice to see it play out in a suitably dramatic burst. It’ll be interesting to see where Wilson and company take the story from here.

Grade: A