Kate’s Review: “Poison Ivy: Cycle of Life and Death”

Book: “Poison Ivy: Cycle of Life and Death” by Amy Chu, Clay Mann (Ill.), & Seth Mann (Ill.)

Publishing Info: DC Comics, September 2016

Where Did I Get This Book: The library!

Book Description: Poison Ivy blossoms into her first solo adventure! There are animals. There are vegetables. And there is somewhere in between. That’s where Dr. Pamela Isley, a.k.a. Poison Ivy, finds herself. Instead of battling the Dark Knight, she is now a researcher at the Gotham Botanical Gardens, studying the possibility of creating plant-human hybrids. But when her fellow scientists start turning up dead, she’s both the natural leading suspect and the only person (or plant) who can crack the case. To solve the mystery, Poison Ivy must team up or throw down with her oldest friends and closest frenemies, from Harley Quinn to Catwoman to the Swamp Thing. Can she keep things under control, or will she be responsible for a deadly new harvest? Sprouting from the brains of the up-and-coming creative team of writer Amy Chu and artist Clay Mann, it s a mean, green murder mystery starring one of Batman’s greatest rogues!

Review: I will admit that my love for Poison Ivy was late blooming (HAHAHA) in all my years of Batman worship. I don’t know if it was because “Batman and Robin” (though Uma Thurman is a goddess and I now appreciate her characterization in spite of everything), or my disinterest in plants in general, but it took far too long for me to love Dr. Pamela Isley. It didn’t happen until I was looking for a cosplay outfit that wouldn’t require a wig, and I dove heart and soul into making a Poison Ivy costume. And it turned out AWESOME, if I do say so myself.

So now that my love for Ivy is here to stay and all encompassing, I was totally tickled when I saw “Poison Ivy: Cycle of Life and Death” during a weeding project at work. I wanted to give this book a stay of execution and wanted to see what author Amy Chu had done with my girl.

There were two, maybe three, really strong aspects to this book. The first is that we get to see Pamela back in her research role, and we get to see how awesome she is at it. While we are used to seeing her as an eco-terrorist or just a general baddie that Batman has to take on, it’s sometimes easy to forget that she is a brilliant scientist, and seeing her passionate and stupendous at her work was heartening as hell. Chu shows that Pamela is in her element, and even throws in some really satisfying moments of fighting back against sexism and misogyny in STEM. True, it’s with violence, but it’s a power fantasy so that’s just fine. The second aspect I enjoyed (a mild spoiler alert here) was the exploration of Poison Ivy as not only a scientific creator, but as a mother as well. She creates human plant hybrids that she raises as her daughters, and I thought that showing motherhood and nurturing sides of Poison Ivy while still letting her maintain her strength and power. Too often these more feminine themes are thrown aside as if they aren’t strengths in superhero stories, so to see it here was great. And the third aspect was seeing some other DC lady favorites like Harley Quinn and Selina Kyle show up and help Ivy when needed, as well as a cameo from another DC character that I’m going to keep under wraps.

Those aspects aside, “Poison Ivy: Cycle of Life and Death” didn’t have the oomph that I wanted from it. While I liked Ivy as a mother figure, her relationship with her three ‘daughters’ Rose, Hazel, and Thorn didn’t get enough deep dive attention. The affection was there, sure, but we didn’t really get to see it build and transform, as a time jump to speed up the plot deprived us of the actual character and relationship development. Another quibble I had was that the relationship between Ivy and Harley Quinn wasn’t nearly sapphic enough. There was something of a hint towards them perhaps being an item if you knew to look for it, but there was a bit more attention towards Ivy’s scientist colleague Darshan and the sexual tension there. To Chu’s credit, while Darshan is a nice addition to the story, his relationship with Ivy doesn’t really go anywhere. But the fact that even the hint of her being with a guy got more attention than the long standing undertones of the Ivy/Harley relationship made me even more frustrated.

And finally, I didn’t really care for the artwork. The reason for this is that while this story really is great in that it puts Ivy at the front and gives her agency and a lot of cool things to do, the character design was definitely still through the male gaze.

It just doesn’t fit with the tone of the story.

I’m glad that Poison Ivy got her own story where she could show off her strengths, and there were certainly good things about “Poison Ivy: Cycle of Life and Death”. I just wish that we had gotten more. But if you like Poison Ivy, you will find things to like here.

Rating 6: A perfectly fine adventure starring one of my favorite anti-heroines, but I really wanted more from it.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Poison Ivy: Cycle of Life and Death” is included on the Goodreads lists “Biologically Interesting Sci-Fi”, and “Ladies of DC”.

Find “Poison Ivy: Cycle of Life and Death” at your library using WorldCat!