Letters to Gotham Girls #19

[Lissilambe]

Please take a moment to tell us what you thought of this issue.

[eric the pilot]

This was another great one in a tremendously long line of great issues. It's really well crafted and a tremendous showcase of your talents. Every character here is used very effectively, it's most impressive.

The spotlight falls on Ivy this time around, letting us into her head really for the first time in this series and you give the audience a really good notion of how she ticks, some of what she's been through and provide a great ride as we watch her shift and change.

You start off introducing us to Roland Dagget, and he serves his purpose well as a macguffin of sorts around which the central theme of the issue - the morality and potential of Poison Ivy - is built. He's there almost at the beginning of Ivy's career and at the end of this phase of it, and he could very well still show up in future.

He's a character with a great deal of potential.

You don't really depict him as completely evil here, certainly not to the degree we've seen with the Joker, though he's also not nearly as pathos-inducing as Harvey Dent either. But one thing is for sure - there's no question why Ivy has issues with him, so you're able to explore a great deal using him without forcing Batgirl into an awkward position of defending an absolute monster.

I liked the interaction with Dagget and Ivy though out, he really gets to go through a wide range of different reactions, sometimes he's smug and super confidant, sometimes he's full of false bravado while hiding great insecurity and fear and sometimes he's just outright terrified, unable to even put up a false front. This really helps to build your case of the potential that Ivy holds, and how she could be any number of things should she choose to embrace them - the central theme of "what do you stand for" is clearly depicted.

Batgirl and Batwoman are also used amazingly well, especially the way you contrast the two. You really do show how it's as much the right person at the right time as it is the right place at the right time when it comes to Ivy's current evolution.

There's little doubt that anyone else would have had much less success encouraging her to wards a different path in life, but even if Batwoman had had the right answers back then, a much younger Ivy might not have been quite as receptive.

We're also given an opportunity to continue to learn more about Renee by contrasting her with her predecessor.

The explorations of their fighting styles in particular was a delight, the notion that Renee appears to have more of a defensive style, rooted seemingly in boxing rather than her predecessor's more acrobatic, hyper kinetic style. I thought that was really novel that you would go out of your way to give them distinct style differences - always loved watching and studying that in martial art films, so it's really a joy to see that played around with here.

In the end, you show the audience exactly what I think they were hoping to see, a difference being made even if it's minor - it's hard to say exactly what form or shape Ivy is going to take on now, but it's clear something has changed and you give us a very evocative image at the closing, Poison Ivy walking off into the sunset after refusing to indulge her basest desire. Whether Dagget will actually change, it's hard to say, but there's no doubt that Ivy did.

That's a very impressive cap to a very impressive issue, way to go!