Love her or leaf her, Poison Ivy’s first foray into headlining a miniseries by herself is definitely something to look into.
Written by Amy ChuCover by Clay Mann
Illustrated by Clay Mann
Colored by Ulises Arreola
Lettered by Janice ChiangLife. Death. Poison Ivy has power over both. But can she keep her friends and hold down a regular job at the same time? As Dr. Pamela Isley, she joins the prestigious plant sciences department at Gotham Botanical Gardens, but things quickly get complicated when a fellow scientist is murdered and it looks like the work of Ivy.
Through mystery and intrigue, Amy Chu does an excellent job of helping Dr. Isley bloom into a character who can stand up in her own stories for the first time as the sole name on the title, taking the setting and multiple facets of the vigilante herself. Seeing as this is still Gotham City, Chu uses a murder mystery as a key element to the drama, balanced against the benevolent, even motherly, quasi-“mad scientist” vibes that Ivy gives off at home in particular. Taken together, her troubles still work toward the more hostile incarnations of Poison Ivy, with her casually retaliating against assaults or threats with extreme force.
Despite her deeper connection with the mystical energies of the Green over any with humanity (of “the Red” in DC Comics terms), the machinations of Poison Ivy draw a deep emphasis on those very interactions with people, be they intended or not. From harassment at her new job (sexual or otherwise) to her relationships with more benevolent coworkers or other friends from her vigilante lifestyle, Chu is able to build both Poison Ivy and Pamela Isley into a cohesive, interesting whole, growing as one unit rather than letting one element or another wither. While Ivy is the core character, she is by no means the only popular figure in DC Comics to appear in the six-issue arc, with a variety of characters showing up to support her in ways that are refreshing for a character who has more commonly been used in the supporting role before.
While our protagonist has a problem dealing with the feelings of adults, she is a lot better with children, a status Chu utilizes to greater heights as ‘Cycle of Life and Death’ has her emerge into the role of a rather atypical mother of sorts to far more humanoid children than those with which she is commonly associated. Granting interesting personalities and fragments of her powers to each of her hybrid “sporelings,” Chu is able to identify key pieces that make her tick and the problems she faces through the trials and tribulations involving her “daughters” as more immature substitutes for herself.
The main problem in Chu’s writing comes from a bit of a meta-textual source: Isley’s ability to remain relatively anonymous. While the story is interesting on its own, readers may have to stretch their suspension of disbelief rather significantly to get past the idea that in Gotham City, a place where Ivy has been a problem time and again and has been routinely sent to Arkham Asylum, she can remain under the radar enough that the scientific community, let alone the police, would not realize exactly who she is from her name and face and have her ostracized in the very least. As written, the story appears to be treated almost like an Elseworld where such a situation could be possible, but perhaps it would not be a problem for some other readers.
Clay Mann is an excellent choice for the artwork on a Poison Ivy book, and ‘Cycle of Life and Death’ shows why. Every pencil stroke is lively and smooth, drawing attention to the beauty and elegance in some people just as it does to horror and violence in others. However, Mann’s focus, above all, is on life, much like the character he is focused on for entire run of the miniseries.
If there is a failing in Mann’s artwork, it is in calmer scenes. At times, the liveliness of his art seems to come short, making expressions too wooden, too neutral, to be taken seriously. While he thrives in action and conflict, simple scenarios (by Gotham standards) like talking with the police about the scene of a murder pale in comparison to those immediately afterwards regarding either posing around a variety of bizarre plants or violently taking out rage on criminal elements. While he doesn’t necessarily leave Dr. Isley out in the cold, the calmer after-action scenes involving her civilian exploits are made a fair bit less exciting, perhaps even unnervingly so, by relative expressionlessness in moments of calm between the storms.
Continued belowUlises Arreola’s colors help to seed new life into even the less stellar moments of Poison Ivy’s adventure. On the one hand, we have the use of multiple different shades and hues of green, a necessity when dealing with someone as plant-focused as the protagonist herself. Every type of green used helps with a purpose, from showing how sickly a human may be to how full of life a plant could be at the same time. Similarly, as with many Poison Ivy-related elements, such shades can also draw attention to the parts of people that may be other-than-human, from the aforementioned sporelings to others of similar persuasion.
Arreola doesn’t only focus on green. Purple, red, blue, brown, and more all factor into the varied colors of ‘Cycle of Life and Death,’ emphasizing the multifaceted nature of life itself. Uses of varied shading help to both draw attention to varied light sources and to increase the sense of heightened emotion, of life (or death) in varied figures, especially when focused in on their faces. This type of coloring is especially prominent on the more famous characters, but is also noticeable on the newer ones.
From the bottom up, Chu, Mann, and Arreola all help to bring Ivy to a sense of her roots as a scientist, and though “Poison Ivy: Cycle of Life and Death” is not without some errant branches in the story’s development along the way, it is still intriguing nonetheless.
