Grounding Up The One Called Chuck: Reviewing ‘Poison Ivy’ #16

Intentional or not, villains have victims. Those caught in the web of machinations which drive those living the villain life. A stray bit of Joker gas, a Riddler trap gone wrong, or Poison Ivy’s attempts to save the world by wiping out humanity.

Poison Ivy #16 allows G. Willow Wilson, Marcio Takara, Arif Prianto, and Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou to bring the sins of Ivy right to her proverbial (possibly literal) doorstep.

Ivy is of course the character we follow in this series. A villain through and through by definition of the word, but one that we can here or there sympathize with. One of the beautiful, among other, things about this series is how it has never shied away from this fact. No matter how great the romance or intrigued one might be by her crusade again corporations, Ivy has done monstrous things. Regular everyday people were forever altered by the choices that she has made.

We saw that a bit with Gløp guru Gwen Caltrope a few issues ago, as she was consumed by the wild lamina spores. Here though, with Chuck, we get the true impact of what Ivy’s crusade which kicked off this series has had on someone.

As expected from this crew, we’re delivered a truly beautiful haunting tragic tale.

It would have been just as easy to showcase the oncoming threat only keeping the focus through Ivy’s eyes and perspective. Switching it up and showing us the slow decline and tragedy surrounding ‘Chuck,’ and how that is coming back to bite Ivy and others is a masterstroke. Willow keeps the balance here as we see what awful things Ivy did, we see her reasoning and confusion, but we also remember she’s a villain with that cold inhumane detachment. She’s so detached that the true name of this man she caused the death of doesn’t matter to her.

For Chuck, the day Ivy passed through his life was the most important day of his remaining life. But for her, it was Tuesday.

This has been a horror story since the first day, with the levels and types of horrors waxing and waning over time. Mostly, though, it’s a very personal horror story wrapped in the eco-horror blanket.

Takara and Prianto are a stellar duo at hitting these vibes time and time again. What makes much of it work is the personal down in the trenches style of the overall artwork. We feel the horror and tragedy of Chuck’s situation because we’re right there with him as it goes down. Very personal panel choices that allow the emotions to be so clear and felt in the moment. Smart choices of perspective, moving us around the characters, and using light or shadows to enhance or detract at different times.

Color wise, much of what is offered stays within that sort of mid-level toned-down range speaking to the focus of our story being such an average person. It’s the lamia spores and other beats that bring on the brighter, darker, and even scarier levels of color as Prianto sprinkles them carefully through the work for the most impact. There is an almost confining feeling coming from the colors as we get deeper, and Chuck (and others) are lost to the horror of the spores.

Simple changes to speech bubbles, whether shape or color or font style, can totally change a moment. It can cause the volume to clearly increase/decrease, allow us to feel terror or anger or happiness, and so much more. Otsmane-Elhaou has the touch that creates lettering of a fluid nature, moving and shifting as needed. Bringing color and weight to the words, filling them with emotion and personality.

Ivy’s very muted but colorful, and natural, caption boxes have been here for quite some time. They give us the view into her head but feel very unattached and clinical at times. Nowhere is that more effective than the here and now. They bring a perfect visual contrast to the increasingly darker and tragic events on the page. Her ‘thoughts’ even fall out of the boxes right into sharp deep darkness, speaking to how uncaring she appears to be.

Seeing everything through the eyes of a scientist, leaving her humanity far behind her.

I give big props here for just how well this series has been able to humanize things while still hitting those comic book goalposts (action, adventure, etc.). On a personal level, it does feel like too much of our entertainment has sidelined some of the human elements in favor of just bigger bold loud action and the like. Don’t get me wrong, I love a lot of big dumb explodey action in things. That being said, there is just something about stories that showcase the human side of things, build out supporting casts, and create actually fleshed out feeling worlds.

Give me a solid done-in-one type story that is full of emotion, heart, beauty that has ties to the overall theme and story of the series and I’m good. In a way it’s a bit of a lost art in a world where big story arcs became the norm (nothing against those). It’s an art that this team truly understands and makes work so well.

Poison Ivy #16 is now available from DC Comics.