Poison Ivy
38 years ago - Pamela Isley is born in Gotham City.
20 years ago - 18-year-old Pamela goes to college to study botany. She has Jason Woodrue as a professor, and volunteers as a subject in some of his experiments, altering her biochemistry.
16 years ago - 22-year-old Pamela graduates & begins her graduate work in Botanical Biochemistry.
14 years ago - 24-year-old Pamela earns her doctorate in Botanical Biochemistry. She creates her own lab in Gotham working to create hybrid plants that can actively clean the environment, although she is continually undermined by the pharmaceutical executives funding her lab.
13 years ago - 25-year-old Pamela's research funding is cut. Enraged, she adapts her own biochemistry to become a plant hybrid, generating a variety of poisonous or mind-controlling pheromones. She begins to slowly take over pharmaceutical companies, controlling the men most responsible for the destruction of the environment. After several deaths, she is discovered by Batman, who captures her when he manages to resist her pheromones.
8 years ago - 30-year-old Pamela joins Swamp Thing as he battles Jason Woodrue's attempt to usurp his role as defender of the Parliment of Trees. She retires to a flower shop in Gotham, promising to help the green.
5 years ago -33-year-old Pamela's location is exposed as part of Edward Nygma's grand scheme. She attacks and almost kills him, only held back with Barbara Gordon's help. She is sent back to Arkham, where she forms a rivalry with Harley Quinzell.
4 years ago - 34-year-old Pamela, the Joker, and Harleen Quinzell are freed from Arkham by Bane. The Joker leaves Harley behind to enact an elaborate plan that nearly floods the entire city. Harley and Pamela leave a trail of destruction behind them. Harley is certain the Joker will come for her, while Pamela tries to get her to stand up for herself. When the Joker finally arrives, escaping Bane's underground, he tries to get Harley to kill Pamela, and abandons her to save his own skin when she does not.
3 years ago - 35-year-old Pamela returns to Gotham during No Man's Land to try to recover her hybrid plants so they aren't lost in the earthquake. She and Harleen Quinzell take over Robinson Park, protecting a group of homeless children. They are attacked by Basil Karlo, but are rescued by Robin.
2 years ago - 36-year-old Pamela and Harleen Quinzell take over an abandoned arboretum in Gotham's East End. They have a turf battle with several local gangs, and are helped by Holly Robinson, nicknamed the Gotham Sirens by the press.
While always considered on of the central members of Batman's rogues gallery, Poison Ivy is also very much set apart from the rest because her motivations are so completely different. She's not a thief, or a psychopath... She's incredibly dangerous, but really only when she's threatened. Unlike so many of the other villains that are proactive, she tends to be content when she's isolated, and only becomes a threat when some outside force disrupts her solitude.
But of course, she wasn't always depicted this way, and how she got to be what she is is actually an interesting notion to explore.
But of course, she wasn't always depicted this way, and how she got to be what she is is actually an interesting notion to explore.
Ivy's Comic HistoryPoison Ivy debuted in 1966. She was originally Dr. Lillian Rose, and was tricked to help in a heist before her accomplice poisoned her in an attempt to kill her. She discovered that she had become immune to all natural toxins, and began using this immunity as a way to exact her revenge on the world, often expressing her rage at men specifically. While Catwoman was a classic femme fatale, Ivy was more often used her sexuality as a deliberate trap in her active rejection of men.
Her backstory was retold in 1988 after the Crisis of Infinite Earths in an issue of Secret Origins. Now called Pamela Isley, she was a student of Jason Woodrue (the human identity of the Floronic Man), who had fallen in love with her professor, been subject to his experiments, and then betrayed, leaving her forever altered and thirsting for revenge. This is the version of the character that is best known, although I do think it's at least passingly noteworthy that both versions of the character are effectively victims of someone else. This can be read in a pretty classic wronged woman revenge trope, but in Ivy's case I think it might be tapping into the tropes of Greek Myth. She feels like a modern day Ariadne, Philomela, or Medusa. Ivy would continue to move subtly back and forth from a more vengeful to more sympathetic character; until one story steered her into a very different direction. |
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Ivy was paired with Harley Quinn in the Animated Series episode 'Harley and Ivy" in 1993. It was a send up of Thelma and Louise, depicting the two of them on a crime spree together, but the pairing seemed to tap into something that I think really needed to be expressed, and simply didn't have a voice. Both Ivy and Harley had been defined forever by their relationships to men. Ivy's whole backstory was based on perpetual victimhood,, but perhaps more importantly her entire schtick was about her manipulating men, keeping them at arms length. Here was a partnership between two women that actively rejected the influence of men. It was the two of them, together. The INTENTION here was to make this relationship platonic, Thelma and Louise style, but their partnership was just too tailor-made to fit the needs of a HUGE queer readership who simply had nothing even close to this pairing, and the popular Harlivy fan-ship really was the biggest and most prominent thing in Poison Ivy's whole world.
She had other stories, of course... pairing with Batman or Swamp Thing. For decades, that romantic relationship was a fan invention and nothing more... but it's persistence over all that time really does go to show just how NECESSARY it was. The Elseworlds DC Bombshells book showed lots of queer relationships between heroes, so of course that was where they were first depicted together. Slowly through several different continuity adjacent books the idea became more and more mainstream, until they were finally (FINALLY!) made cannon in Batman: Urban Legends #1 in 2021. By the end of the year they kissed right in the middle of DC's flagship book, Batman #117. |
Our Poison Ivy StoryWe really kind of hyperfocused on Ivy and Harley's relationship here, but in truth this is really where all the ideas of who Ivy is come into focus. Her past is rooted in anger and revenge, and while she certainly had external motivations like "eco terrorism" (Let me kill the billionaire!) There is, in retrospect, a distinct sense that she was always struggling against something inside herself.
That's kind of what's so great about the Harley and Ivy pairing, because it feels like these are legitimately two people who were incomplete without each other. Together they're able to tap into wellsprings of strength in themselves, and even though we're talking about a couple of supervillains, that's still a really cool thing. We do of course want to depict those early years of Pamela as a dangerous threat in Gotham, but were careful not to actually make it a big overt criminal undertaking. She's not robbing banks or holding the city hostage. Her actions are more subtle, secretly taking over the pharmaceutical companies, and the men running them, that seek to control her. At her core, I think that's really what Poison Ivy is about; about control, and this particular woman's refusal to allow others to take it. This is really a difficult character to frame as a villain, because she's honestly right about most of this. That's probably the main reason she needs to be so callus about the people she murders, because otherwise, I don't think she'd be the bad guy at all. |
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Ivy's FutureIvy is always going to be one of the primary Batman enemies, but she's not the only one who has slowly become more sympathetic over time. Catwoman, obviously, but also Clayface and the Riddler have found less antagonistic ways to interact with the Bat Family. Ivy, for her part, is probably not going to wind up as a good guy at any point (She is absolutely fine killing people and that isn't changing) but we are often seeing her needs aligning with the good guys, and as such she winds up working with them.
Of course, Ivy's real future at this point is Harley. Their partnership is a huge plot driver, showing the two of them getting into all sorts of antics, with Ivy often working as the more rational of the two. During this sort of story we actually get to see Ivy displaying her original skills as a scientist more and more, as though being with Harley has allowed her to put a lot of her anger behind her and focus on the change she really wants to make in the world. We've even paired them up with the new Catwoman, Holly Robinson, creating the Gotham City Sirens, a sort of anti-birds of prey who I'm sure will be a thorn in the side of EVERYONE. (pun intended.) |
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