Originally published on Patreon
The latest issue of Poison Ivy continues Ivy down her path towards her goal for total global destruction of the human race, whilst humanising her a little, and bringing the series villain a little more into the foreground.
Last issue Ivy spent some time reconnecting with another human being by helping her to plant a small garden area next to her motel. It gave Ivy a small breather from her mission, and it showed a side to her that's been pretty lacking since this series started.
In this issue Ivy gets a job for Amazon, sorry, unspecified high intensity packing job for an online retailer that has awful bosses and makes their employees suffer through harsh work practices. Absolutely not Amazon. Anyway, Ivy is immediately reminded of Jason Woodrue, the man who abused her and turned her into Poison Ivy, by her new boss.
She's barely into her first shift, secreting her killer spores into the thousands of packages being shipped out, when one of her coworkers gets sexually abused by the boss. Feeling a level of kinship for the woman, Ivy terrorises the boss, infects him with the spores, and controls him into doing something good for a short while before he dies.
As her reward for helping the woman Ivy gets to immediately jump into bed with her. However, she gets attacked by one of the plant monsters following her.
So, I've got some issues with this one. All of the stuff with Ivy working in not-Amazon are great. I like how she's using it to spread her spores, how the abusive boss reminds her of her own past trauma, and how she gets back at him. It's all great as it humanises her a bit more, and despite her continuing with her plan I think that this is another of these tiny human interactions that's eventually going to get her to rethink things.
The thing that I didn't like here was Ivy sleeping with the woman she helped. It felt incredibly rushed, 'you got rid of my abusive boss you just assaulted me, you can have sex as a reward' felt a bit weird. But the weirdest part was that through the experience Ivy's internal monologue to Harley was telling her how she's thinking about her the whole time, but how great it was, and she imagines Harley sitting in he corner watching with a big smile on her face like this is some kind of cuckold situation. It felt all kinds of wrong.
Harley and Ivy are a couple that are going through a weird patch, I get that, but surely this is something that would mean their relationship is done, right? Ivy is saying how much she cares about Harley and how she loved her, and how sleeping with someone else meant nothing because she was thinking of her the whole ti,e is abusive a fuck to me. Harley got out of one nasty relationship and now it seems like she's stumbled into another. If Ivy ever tells her about this and Harley doesn't dump her on the spot I'll be pissed. It felt like such a huge misstep, and I honestly hated it.
Overall, though, the comics is continuing to be great, with fantastic art, and interesting story, and the most engaging and layered Poison Ivy story I think I've ever read.
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