In this review of Poison Ivy #35, things change for Ivy as The Gardener makes a return to the scene. Have things changed for the former friends?
Poison Ivy #35 main cover by Jessica Fong (DC Comics)
POISON IVY #35
Written by G. WILLOW WILSON
Art by MARCIO TAKARA
Main Cover: JESSICA FONG
Variant Covers: EIJIKURE, BEN HARVEY, CHAY RUBY, KYUYONG EOM
Page Count: 32 pages
Release Date: 8/6/25
This comic book review contains spoilers
The Story
Poison Ivy #35 directly follows up Ivy’s confrontation with the Gotham City Police Department in Marshview at the end of the last issue. Janet from HR feels conflicted as she secretly revealed their location to the GCPD, but they took Killer Croc rather than Ivy as agreed upon.
Meanwhile, Ivy speaks to Wendy Richardson, a woman who survived a labia spore infection that left her deformed. Richardson explains how she was at a wellness retreat with Ivy where everyone was infected with labia spores. Ivy created a vaccine antidote which Richardson refused to take. Her survival means that Ivy must come to terms with the fact that the virus is still out there, and that she wasn’t able to completely eradicate it like she believed.
Ivy puts Janet to bed and goes to Gotham City to visit Harley Quinn. She asks her advice on how to deal with Bella Garten and the Order of the Green Knight, but Quinn tells her she should just talk to Garten directly. So Peter Undine, Wendy Richardson, and Ivy all go to Seattle to see her. Ivy apologizes for her initial rejection of the Order of the Green Knight and indicates that she is now ready to lead it.
Garten rejects Ivy’s offer, and says the Order will have to choose between following her or following Ivy. Immediately, a fight breaks out amongst the followers which Ivy has to break up. Finally, she confronts Garten in the rain and takes her hands in her own. She alters her microbes to infect her with a biotoxin that will make her poisonous to everything she touches. To a botanist like Garten, this is a fate worse than death.
Analysis
Poison Ivy #35 makes another detour from the Janet from HR, Parliament of Trees storyline to bring back Bella Garten and Wendy Richardson. There are positives and negatives to having a single writer at the help of a book that runs for several years. The positives are tonal consistently, singular vision and voice, and a strong sense of continuity. The downsides are that you are stuck with a singular iteration of a character, thematic repetition, and in the case of Poison Ivy, and seemingly ever growing number of plot threads, loose ends, and overlapping character motivations.
We seem to be at the point of the run where G. Willow Wilson has a handful of open threads that she can just shuffle around at her leisure, depending on what kind of story she wants to tell each week. She seems less concerned about wrapping up individual storyarcs definitively, as she can always return to them later down the line. The problem with this is that it kills the momentum of any one story.
Poison Ivy #35 sees the return of Wendy Richardson and the labia spores storyline that hasn’t been touched upon in over a year of issues. With such a huge delta in when it was last explored, it’s difficult to muster much enthusiasm for it. Wilson brings these elements back to explore a very transparent vaccine-mandate dialectic: should people be required to take a vaccine if not doing so will endanger the life of others. There’s no real subtlety or insight into this issue, it’s just stated bluntly for the reader to accept.
We then return to the Bella Garten and Order of the Green Knight storyline that was abandoned several issues ago only to return at the end of last issue. Garten remains a pretty flat and uninspired character who seems to only serve to provide conflict with Ivy, and the Order itself is stripped of any agency whatsoever. Their only purpose is to convey a heavy-handed “look at how quickly we turn against ourselves” political allegory.
I don’t have much in the way of specific criticisms since there isn’t much in the way of a single story, but I will give one. The reason Ivy gives for Harley not living with her is: “I couldn’t live with myself if she got hurt.” This is the same person who carries a giant hammer, kills people, and dated The Joker. That excuse might work for Spider-Man talking about Mary Jane, but it doesn’t for Harley.
Marcio Takara’s art and Arif Prianto’s colors are the highpoint as always. This is far from the flashiest issue but even on an off issue, Takara is cooking with heat. This series remains full of visual splendor, every page looks great and shoutout to the freaky looking effect they give to Bella Garten after she is infected. The other undervalued MVP of this series is Hassan Otsamne-Elhaou whose lettering remains creative and personalized to the characters.
Final Thoughts
The biggest problem I have with Poison Ivy #35 is that it’s not really a story. Instead it’s a series of story fragments from a variety of past half-baked concepts and ideas from this run. The art is terrific but that’s about all.
