When most people think of Poison Ivy, they picture a human woman who's able to bend plant life to her command. However, in a new variant cover by Matías Bergara, DC makes it clear that Ivy's new era is far more drastic than that. On a new quest to wipe out mankind, Poison Ivy is currently showing she is not just a misunderstood hero but a villainous master of body horror.
Matías Bergara is a comic book and video game artist best known for books like Hellblazer and Coda. Bergara has produced art and graphic novels for BOOM!, Image, DC/Vertigo, and others. Bergara's gorgeous work has been nominated for Eisner and Angoulême awards, and with this new artwork fans can see why.
This variant cover was shared via Bergara’s Twitter account as well as by DC itself, and shows Poison Ivy with huge 'wings' made of vegetation. As a villain who justifies her actions by saying, "Nature isn't cruel, it's just efficient," this new cover embodies her new attitude. It portrays Poison Ivy as a half-human and half-plant creature that is somehow both disturbing and eye-catchingly stunning. The colors flow into one another like water through the veins of a leaf. Roots sprout from her hair, she is covered in sprouting fruit which could just as easily be horrifying sores, and she exposes a single, blood-red eye through fingers that turn green towards the knuckles. The colorful and grotesque cover is a perfect reflection of Ivy’s new mission. The issue itself will come from G. Willow Wilson and Marcio Takara.
Ironically, Ivy's new series has seen her lose her connection to the Green and her innate control over plants, however this has only made her more terrifying. Despite not having her usual powers, Ivy has begun using spores and parasites to turn her victims into monstrosities, including innocents. In recent years, it had seemed as if DC Comics was pushing Poison Ivy toward being an antihero, or even (at one point) a member of the Bat-Family, but this newest series undoes all of that. Ivy has shown no remorse in her mission to end humankind, even referring to her actions as the “sixth mass extinction.” Begara’s new cover for Poison Ivy #4 shows readers the deadly being she has become in spirit.
This is a fitting cover and an epic new form for Ivy, a woman who has set out to transform and exterminate every single human in DC Comics. It portrays the depths she will go to remake the world. Matías Bergara’s design gives Poison Ivy a fitting new look that invokes the horror of what she is becoming, and the way in which her new philosophy betrays the sanctity of the human body.
Source: Matías Bergara
Poison Ivy #4 is available from DC Comics September 6.