Review: Poison Ivy Annual #1

In this review of the Poison Ivy 2025 Annual, Poison Ivy sees the history of an ancient conflict involving kings, sorcerers and the biblical Tree of Knowledge. 

POISON IVY 2025 ANNUAL #1
Written by G. WILLOW WILSON
Art by MARK BUCKINGHAM
Main Cover: JESSICA FONG
Variant Covers: JAE LEE, SEB McKINNON
Page Count: 48 pages
Release Date: 11/12/25

This comic book review contains spoilers 

Poison Ivy 2025 Annual #1 sees Ivy seeking out the Tree of Knowledge, otherwise known as Tuuru, to ask it about The Green’s ultimate purpose. When she finds it, she eats its fruit and is transported back to an earlier time thousands of years in the past where a sorceress communes with nature, both the Green and the Gray. For years the sorceress serves as ambassador between the people and nature, until one day she meets a king. The sorceress briefly espouses some proto-Marxist ideas about resource distribution before being sucked in by the king’s charms, so she follows him to his grand castle in the woods. The king describes his vision for the kingdom where people of all kinds will come live and where they will have schools, hospitals, and roads. He promises to keep the balance between mankind and nature. 

The pair sleep together before the king invites the sorceress to his wedding and she leaves to make him a wedding gift. She asks Tuuru for help but the tree warns her of the dangers of mankind, still she is able to convince the tree to help her forge a golden sword out of its sap. 

At the wedding, the king is married to a princess from an unnamed land, and the sorceress meets a fellow magician who has come with her. Over time the magician becomes a malignant influence on the king, feeding into his vanity and ambition rather than his warmth and magnanimity. One day, the sorceress comes across a deforested area and weeps. The magician tells her that humankind takes precedence over nature and the sorceress releases that she made a mistake in trusting the king. 

The sorceress goes to plead with the queen to ask her to stop the king from consuming the forest for the benefit of his kingdom. She says she will give her the sword she originally made for the king. However the magician finds her in the woods before she is able to get it and he drowns her in the river. He tells the queen what he has done but she takes a boat out into the river to find the sorceress. She emerges from the water grasping the golden sword and gifts it to the queen before making her promise to maintain the balance between humans and nature. 

Finally, the sorceress settles the score by turning the evil magician into a tree. Then, many years later after the kingdom had prospered and the king had died, the queen returned to the sorceress bearing the broken golden sword. The queen admits that she destroyed the forest when her people were hungry and that there is no way to live in perfect harmony while building a civilization for humankind. 

Back in the present day, Pamela realizes that the Tree is trying to tell her that mankind will never live in harmony with nature and that her human allies will always betray her. She chooses to ignore this lesson and continue to attempt to rectify the two sides in the future.

Analysis

Poison Ivy 2025 Annual #1 was cool. I liked this a lot. The biblical inspiration mixed with a vaguely Celtic sword and sandals adventure is a really interesting change of pace from the normal narrative of this book. The sorceress is clearly a stand-in for both Eve and Ivy and her seduction into the world of man and away from nature is a tale as old as time (literally). This isn’t a complex or surprising story by any means. Instead it’s more occupied with broad ancient archetypes and legends, and cleverly doesn’t ground itself in any specific place in time. The characters are all simple archetypes: good hearted king, evil magician and confidant, wise sorceress, etc. which leans into the fairy tale atmosphere G. Willow Wilson is clearly going for here. Having said that, the magician did recall the more contemporary Rasputin here, in both his mystical ways and his ‘devil on the shoulder’ presence in regards to the king. 

Ultimately Poison Ivy 2025 Annual #1 works much more as a standalone story than as part of the greater narrative of the Poison Ivy book. For one thing, Ivy essentially brushes off the entire moral of the story which makes the whole 40 pages kind of moot. Still, as it’s own thing it’s a nice little fairy tale that avoids any big surprises or twists (unless you count the queen’s revelation at the end) but is nonetheless still quite entertaining. 

In general, Mark Buckingham’s art is solid and provides a kind of classical grace that is akin to an illustrated edition of Grimms’ Fairy Tales or something of the like. However there are moments where he struggles, especially in the side profiles like on page 12 where the sorceress’ face looks truly bizarre. The sorceress’ side profiles throughout look somewhere between ET and a frog, which really clashes with the antiquated beauty in the rest of the art. Luckily he avoids those angles as much as possible. This is really the perfect project for him and makes me wish we got some kind of medieval epic akin to Fables that he could really stretch his legs in. 

Final Thoughts

Overall, Poison Ivy 2025 Annual #1 is an odd but welcomed detour to the main Poison Ivy arc. There’s some classical storytelling and some really lovely old-timey art from Mark Buckingham. Definitely a fun issue.