The new Poison Ivy #1 from DC Comics pulls no punches, leaves no branch untouched, and begins to bloom immediately.
I really loved this issue, but can’t always count the ways:
It’s because of the smart, sassy, and spring-like script by writer G. Willow Wilson. She launches us quickly into the land of spores, mushroom viruses, and potentially lethal contact with an embittered Pamela Isley. The relaxed euphoria we are experiencing while reading the first chapter is either a result of Wilson’s excellent grasp of dramatic flow, the exceptional dialogue, or it’s from the story’s parasitic mushrooms!
Before my typing fingers get lazy and covered in itchy lichen, let me also assure you that you can count on the many spendoured variant covers (four plus the amazing main cover illustrated by Jessica Fong). And on Marcio Takara’s artistic take on the interiors: blossoming death, transplanted terror, the terroir of the terminal illness, the inescapable spread of the unstoppable sickness. The flow of the graphics, the smooth transition of the visuals from flashback lovely-romanticism to “let death do us part”; oh, the art is amazing. Arif Prianto’s colouring deepens the sense of inevitability, the setting of the sun of innocence, the east-to-west-traipsing of Poison Ivy, busy as hell on a mission.
Lettering by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou lets us read cursive on lined paper, see the vocal tones and feel the effects of fever (you give me fever…)
It’s a feverish pace, to be sure, this story. It’s all set for further complications, it’s all planting sudden shifts in the growing season, can you dig it?
DC Comics, Poison Ivy #1, $3.99 for 23 pages of content. Teen
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