Poison Ivy #29 // Review
Things have gotten weird. Pamela is just outside of Seattle. This is particularly strange as she was just in the marsh outside of Gotham City some 2,872 miles away on the other side of the country. It’s as if the marsh heard her wish to get there quickly and simply put her there by magic. Pamela is suddenly quite a long way from hom in Poison Ivy #29. Writer G. Willow Wilson continues a long and satisfying journey with everyone’s favorite super-powered former eco-terrorist in another issue brought to page and panel by artist Marcio Takara and colorist Arif Prianto.
Pamela often gets so caught-up in herself that she doesn’t notice when people are trying to help her. In this case the person in question is a place. It’s a magical marsh that transported her instantly when it would have taken her 7 hours by plane. (Not that she would have been able to do so for very complicated reasons.) Now that she’s arrived she can seek-out a group of eco-cultists that she’s looking for. It’s going to be kind of an awkward meeting. Ages ago she would have loved to have had total control over an army willing to die for her cause...
Wilson’s script is as witty as it is complicated. And probably one of the single best-written titles on the comics rack today. Poison Ivy is thrust into a position of being a messiah by a former lover who is taking advantage of her without her consent. There is SO MUCH cleverly brilliant allegory in that premise alone. The dialogue that she wraps around the meeting between the two of them is absolutely captivating.
As smart and funny as the script is, it would have been a bit of a challenge for an art team that wasn’t quite as deft as Takara and Prianto. The issue is almost entirely driven by interpersonal drama. Takara and Prianto have a breathtakingly vivid grasp of subtle fluctuations of emotion in Pamela and her. supporting cast on so many levels in so many ways. Panels come alive with every angle of action from the grandest outburst of anger to the slightest shifting of emotion. Prianto’s colors are brilliantly atmospheric. Depth and passion are written into every face with delicately subtle bits of color work from Prianto. As always, Pamela is strikingly beautiful throughout the issue.
It’s staggeringly cool that Wilson and company have been able to keep the same team together on this title for as long as she has. It’s all been so much fun that it’s easy to forget that they’ve been working together for nearly 2.5 years now. That’s really amazing considering the nature of the industry these days. It’s been a very, very cool journey thus far and it’s only getting more and more interesting as things progress. Wilson clearly has a very sharp vision for what she’s doing and it’s great that she’s had so much consistency with the rest of the creative team thus far.
