Poison Ivy: Cycle of Life and Death #1 Review #PoisonIvyLeague

Sorry this is coming out a day late, but it was kind of a busy night. Comics to read, fundraisers to go to, yada yada yada. Regardless, I wanna give my thoughts on Poison Ivy: Cycle of Life and Death #1. Given that I’ve been a member of the Poison Ivy League for quite some time now, I figured I’d go ahead and let everyone know if it met my expectations.

So, this book is awesome. lol I’m sorry, it just is. It does a great job of returning Pam to her…well, for a lack of a better term, ‘roots’, and letting her be Super-Awesome, Super-Sexy, Brilliant Science Woman. And while she doesn’t explicitly kill anyone, she does give a fair amount of assholes trying to have their way a good beating, so there’s plenty of her being a badass, too. She even rides a sweet-ass motorcycle (or crotch rocket, as a friend of mine on Twitter called it), although…maybe it’s just because I watched Batman TAS as a kid, but I always figured her vehicle of choice would be pink. 😛 And yes, for drooling fanboys (and drooling fangirls, let’s be honest, you exist, lol), there is a scene of her naked, although it is…erm, semi-tastefully done. Most of the book, though, focuses on her being a scientist and getting a second chance at working in a legitimate lab without being judged for her criminal behaviour, and while she insists that she’s better off alone, you can tell it’s having a positive influence on her. She is completely in her element here, and it’s a joy to watch.

If I had one minor issue that kinda rubbed me the wrong way, though, and I fully admit that I could be reading too much into this, but it felt like, much in the same way the Harley Quinn book disregards Ivy’s growth as a character, this book seems to neglect Harley’s growth and that she’s been living a life away from Joker and outside his influence for some time now. I get that Harley’s growth occurs in a VERY problematic book, especially for Ivy fans, and for those of us who found the implications at the end of the Harley/PG team-up offensive as all hell, and that continuity between books at DC right now is loose as all hell. However, that just makes me think of a bigger problem. Really, it just annoys me that, while I’m glad the writers are allowed to do whatever stories they want now, the fact that there’s little to no continuity from one book to another just means that the editors have one less job to do that they’re being paid to do and instead have more time to pretend to be writers. Honestly, I just wish we had a solid continuity where everyone was written and treated fairly, and that we didn’t need to have apparently separate universes in order to have a well-written Poison Ivy.

Regardless, though, this book is frigging awesome. Granted, from a story perspective, it’s all pretty much set-up for the rest of the mini-series, but it’s all well-done, with the exception of a character death that I probably would’ve seen coming even without being spoiled by the solicitations. But, it’s still great, I can’t wait to see where Amy Chu goes from here with the book, and I hope that, when it’s over, we get the ongoing solo series we’ve been wanting for years now…although, with said series, might be a good idea to simply call it Poison Ivy. Otherwise, it’s kind of a mouthful. lol

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the book. Lemme know what you think of it, and we’ll see how things go from here on out. Ja né!