Poison Ivy #16 – G. Willow Wilson, Writer; Marcio Takara, Artist; Arif Prianto, Colorist
Ray – 9/10
Ray: After the showdown with Undine, this title seems ready for a break from the high-intensity storylines—yeah, good luck with that. G. Willow Wilson has done a great job of balancing Ivy as a likable antihero with the things she does that cause mass carnage, but… she’s gotten away with a lot so far, particularly in the first arc when she was wandering the country spreading her Lamia spores as aggressively as she could with the intention of ending humanity. It’s likely thousands of people were affected before she called them off as best she could, many dying—and she never answered to it. Until now. Because the things she left behind aren’t staying dead, and they’re coming for her—starting with one workaday man named Chuck, who was one of the unfortunate first to be infected. Confused by this strange infection, he shrugged it off and went to work, spreading it further until his body gave out.
While Ivy is the lead character, Chuck is sort of the POV character here as we trace his decline, including his hallucinatory visits to Ivy’s dreamscape, where he and her other victims seem to follow her around. She dismisses it as a quirk of her own infection—until powerful enemies of hers start showing up in her dreams as well. It’s a risky move to take a lead character and immerse us in the pain she’s caused and the people she’s hurt, but I think it works—this series has a lot of confidence in its readers to embrace a very complex lead character with flaws. But as the issue ends and we see Chuck’s final act, we discover that he’s not all gone—and neither is any of Ivy’s victims, as they make a move on the happy little life she’s built in Slaughter Swamp. It feels like this is what the entire series has been building to, and the final page is genuinely chilling.
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GeekDad received this comic for review purposes.
