Pam’s a monster. So naturally...when she runs across a dead body, her first instinct is to run. She wants the world to know that she didn’t do it. Not this time. To make matters worse...there’s a flower growing right out of the corpse’s face. So...y’know...Pamela would be a prime suspect even if she WASN’T at the scene of the crime. Clearly, Pamela has become a target in Poison Ivy #14. Writer G. Willow Wilson continues a thoroughly satisfying run with a beautiful monster that is brought to the page by artist Marcio Takara and colorist Arif Prianto. 

“At this point in a story, you have a choice,” she says at the beginning of the issue. “Continue or walk away.” She doesn’t have to engage. She doesn’t have to solve the puzzle. Whoever killed the man knew that she would find him. The place where Pam finds the body is interesting...it’s a work site for a slimeball developer who Lex Luthor let loose on Gotham City. Clearly, someone involved with the development company has something against Poison Ivy...and she’s going to have to figure out what the hell is going on because, clearly, she’s being led into some kind of trap...

Wilson has slowly been building a nice little ensemble with a lot of different moving pieces and personalities that lend themselves quite well to dazzlingly interesting emotional dynamics. Janet from HR ends up becoming a major supporting character in an issue that continues to show Wilson’s willingness to throw the story in some very, VERY interesting directions both in and out of the main characters’ professional lives. Wilson is also balancing the action and the drama quite well in an issue that continues to explore the line between heroism and villainy in new and novel ways.

Takara is given an opportunity to throw some pleasantly surreal horror imagery onto the page. The artist is able to do so in a way that feels truly interesting. The visuals that Takara has developed for the page feel deliciously poetic. There’s real poetry to the visuals of the more earthbound end of the drama as well. It’s all impressively well-articulated throughout, with particular charm hitting the page in the form of Ivy, Harley, and Janet from H.R. Prianto, who manages some really impressive mood and depth in and out of the surreal moments that slide around the page.

Questions of the difference between hero and villainy continue to be explored with monsters of all sorts. Above all, every character in the series seems really, really interesting in ways that one might not entirely expect. Even Harley is given and interesting and novel new life. This is quite an accomplishment, given all of the different angles that she has been given over the years. Wilson, Takara, and Prianto continue to develop something truly distinct and distinctive that feels quite unlike anything else on the comics rack right now. Very, very impressive stuff that doesn’t seem to be slowing down or fading in the least.

Grade: A+