Poison Ivy

Poison Ivy (Dr. Pamela Lillian Isley) is a DC Comics supervillain and is primarily an enemy of Batman. Created by Robert Kanigher, she first appeared in Batman #181 (June 1966).

In the series Gotham Girls, Poison Ivy deemed herself as one of "the world's most prominent eco-terrorists." She is obsessed with plants, botany and environmentalism. She utilizes toxins from plants and her own bloodstream for her criminal activities, which are usually aimed at protecting the natural environment. She has created love potions that have ensnared Batman, Superman and other strong-willed individuals. She is somewhat misanthropic and at times she has even mentioned that she would like a world solely ruled by plants. Fellow villain Harley Quinn is her recurring partner-in-crime and potentially only human friend.

Originally modeled after pin-up girl Betty Page, Ivy is a manipulative, red-haired seductress. Sometimes she is dressed in her a form-fitting green costume. Other times she is seen in minimal attire composed of leaves. She is most often depicted barefoot. Her skin is sometimes a snow-white alabaster, but in more-recent appearances she has had a soft-green hue.

Poison Ivy was popularized by the 1990s-era The Animated Series and co-starred in its flash animation spin-off Gotham Girls. Uma Thurman played her in the 1997 movie Batman and Robin, a film and performance that were roundly scorned.

Character history

Dr. Pamela Lillian Isley, a promising botanist from Seattle, was seduced by Marc LeGrande into assisting him with the theft of an Egyptian artifact containing ancient herbs. Fearing she would implicate him in the theft, he attempted to poison her with the herbs, which were deadly and untraceable. She survived this murder attempt and discovered she now had accquired an immunity to all natural toxins and diseases. (World's Finest Comics #252).

Post-Crisis, her origins were revised. Isley studied advanced botanical biochemistry at university with Alec Holland under Dr Jason Woodrue. Woodrue impersonated LeGrande and poisoned Isley as an experiment, causing her transformation into Poison Ivy. ^* She nearly died twice as a result from these poisonings, driving her insane. The testing also made her barren, and she has treated her plants as children, mothering them ever since. (Batman: Shadow Of The Bat 1995 Annual #3, Batman 1997 graphic novel: Poison Ivy).

Poison Ivy was a member of the original Injustice Gang of the World, which fought the Justice League on several occasions. She also joined the Secret Society of Super-Villains for a mission against the Justice League. Years later, she was coerced into being a member of the Suicide Squad. During this time she used her abilities to enslave Count Vertigo.

She also has been friends with the Joker's sidekick Harley Quinn. Unlike most villain team-ups, their partnership seems to be genuinely rooted in friendship, and Ivy really wants to save Harley from her abusive relationship with The Joker. (Their close friendship, particularly in the animated series, fueled fan-speculation of possible lesbian undertones - enough so that a number of creators have made tongue-in-cheek allusions to the speculation, most notably in the Batman: The Animated Series tie-in comics, and the Joker-Mask comic).

At times Ivy has shown positive, even maternal traits. When Gotham City was destroyed in an earthquake, rather than fight over territory like most of Batman's enemies, she took over Robinson Park and turned it into a tropical paradise. Dozens of children who were orphaned during the quake came to live with her, and she cared for them despite her usual misanthropy. After Batman rescued her and the children from being enslaved by Clayface, he recognized that staying with her was the best thing for them, and they remained in her care until the city was restored.

By that point, the police were adamant that she would leave the park and release the children, even though they wished to remain. Ivy planned to martyr herself along with the park rather than have it destroyed by military defolliants, but relented and turned herself in rather than endanger the children.

During this time she was manipulated with other Gotham characters by the Riddler in the " Hush" storyline. Soon afterwards, the Riddler, who was being chased and attacked by Hush, approached Ivy and sought her protection. The short tale between Ivy and Riddler would play out as a back story in Detective Comics issues 797-799. In this arc, Ivy would battle the Riddler physically and psychologically. Ivy would come to dominate this encounter on both sides and leave the Riddler as a broken and defeated man.

Poison Ivy came to believe that her powers were killing the children she had looked after, so she got Batman to reverse her powers and make her a normal human being once more. Soon after she was convinced by Hush to take another serum to restore her powers and apparently died in the process. However, when her grave was visited shortly thereafter, it was covered with vine and ivy, creating the impression her death would be short-lived. A short time later Poison Ivy appeared in Gotham Central #32 , killing some corrupt cops who killed one of her orphans, though whether this takes place before or after the aforementioned storyline is unknown.

"One Year Later", Ivy is alive and active. Her control over flora has increased, referred to as being on a par with Swamp Thing or Floronic Man. She also appears to have resumed her crusade against the corporate enemies of the environment with increased fanatical vigour, regarding Batman no longer as a main opponent but as a 'hindrance'.

Sexuality

The true sexuality of Poison Ivy has never been outright said in comic books. There is evidence to support heterosexuality, homosexuality, and bisexuality.

She has said numerous times that she is in love with Batman (Batman: Poison Ivy and Shadow of the Bat: Annual #3) and even expressed a sexual attraction for his "perfect physique". Although both of these issues are placed close to the beginning of Batman's career, a more recent example of Ivy having feelings for Batman can be found in Batman & Poison Ivy: Cast Shadows.

In Dark Victory Chapter 11, she is drawn to Two-Face and attempts to seduce him (even kissing him without trying to poison him), but is then rebuffed by a Harvey Dent who is still pining after his estranged wife Gilda Dent.

In A.J. Lieberman's recent abhorred run on Gotham Knights #60-65, she can be seen considering a relationship with Hush when offered and grows closer to Bruce Wayne. In Harley Quinn #3, she calls Deadshot, a former teammate from the Suicide Squad, a "stud-muffin".

In Batman #608 and again in #612, there is an implied lesbian fling between Ivy and Catwoman.

In Superman/Batman #19, she forces a kiss on Supergirl (Also note that this is her first on-panel kiss with another woman).

Her relationship with Harley Quinn has always been used as a point of reference to support lesbianism, mainly due to the pinups Bruce Timm drew of the two characters hugging, the visual innuendos in the episode Harley & Ivy, and the Batgirl one-shot by Paul Dini in which Barbara Gordon asks Harley about the "close friendship" that she and Ivy share.

Though, in the recent Dini/Timm miniseries Batman: Harley & Ivy, Ivy is seen having a kind of intercourse with her plants in the Amazon, suggesting dendrophilia.

So, Poison Ivy's sexuality has never been for certain. She has been seen attracted to men, women, and even flora. Some speculate that with the amount of chemicals and pheromones circulating within her, her sexuality is at best blurred and can't be properly categorized as heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual.

Powers and abilities

The dangerous experiments placed a deliberate overdose of plant and animal based toxins into her blood stream that make her touch deadly and allowed her to boost her immunity to all poisons, viruses, bacteria, and fungi. Some comics have even gone so far as to depict her as more plant than human, breathing CO2 and requiring sunlight to survive.

Ivy is known to be able to seduce men and women alike, often using pheromones to do so. This (and her relationship with Harley Quinn) have led some fans to believe that she is bisexual, although most stories make it clear that Ivy is uninterested in any sort of romantic relationship with humans.

She specializes in hybrids and can create the most potently powerful toxins in Gotham City. Often these are secreted from her lips and administered via a kiss. They come in a number of varieties, from mind controlling drugs to instantly fatal necrotics. Her skin is toxic as well, although contact with it is usually not fatal.

In some adaptations she can control plants via telepathy. For example, in Living Hell she was able to manipulate plants telepathically, using roots to form supports for a tunnel she and another inmate named Magpie were digging to escape, and also spawning glowing fungi to entertain Magpie.

Appearing in Gotham the same year as Batman, her aforementioned control of plants has increased significantly with each passing year. Before, just being able to manipulate plants such as vines ( The Long Halloween for example), she has since become stronger. In Greg Rucka's Fruit of the Earth storyline, she controlled an entire tree to come down on Clayface, ensnaring him in its branches. More recently, in Batman & Poison Ivy: Cast Shadows, she can be seen bringing down a whole skyscraper with giant vines. Her increased strength has only recently been brought to everyone's attention in Face the Face.

She has been known to carry a cross-bow and a vine whip which she also has used as a lasso. At times, the vine has had thorns on it. She also occasionally uses hand thrown and blowpipe launched poisoned darts.

Poison Ivy's athletic abilities have grown over the course of her career. She has learned a limited style of martial arts fighting. She is a proficient at climbing and leaping. She is a strong and fast swimmer.

In The Animated Series, her only physical power is an immunity to poison, and when using a poisoned kiss, she uses lipstick poisoned by toxins extracted from a plant. She admits to having a "hyperactive immune system" which prevents her from having children. In The Batman, she can even exhale mind-controlling spores in the form of a blown kiss.

Poison Ivy has been identified by the Swamp Thing as a being with an elemental mystical component, who he called the 'May Queen'. Writers haven't referred to her in this way in quite some time, and it's unknown whether she still retains this mystical identifier, or has lost that for a purely scientific nature.

Scientific incongruity

There has been some controversy surrounding Poison Ivy's biology. It has been mentioned that her blood contains chlorophyll which, being a pigment, would theorhetically cause her to have green skin. However, most portrayals of her (particularly earlier ones) depicted her with either ordinary tan, or off-white skin. This has been a source of fan speculation for many years.

In recent years, DC Comics has depicted Ivy with green skin in some comics, although these are an exception to the norm. Although DC has made no real attempt to explain this incongruity, many fans believe that Ivy has the ability to consciously control her own body chemistry, and can change her blood to chlorophyll at will. Evidence for this is her ability to control what sort of poison her lips secrete (she has used types that were deadly, caused unconsciousness, created hallucinations, and put people under hypnotic control) and the fact that her skin is treated as toxic at some times, and harmless at others.

An alternate explanation for this storyline was offered in Catwoman Vol. 1, #57 where a chemical formula of Ivy's falls onto her skin and causes the pigmentation change.

In other media

In the DC animated universe, Poison Ivy was voice-acted by Diane Pershing. Her first appearance, in The Animated Series, involved an assassination attempt on Harvey Dent, as retribution for construction over the last habitat of a rare flower. In the earlier days of the Animated series, her meta-human characteristics, such as her immunity to toxins, were stated on many occasions, portraying her as a human with an extreme affinity for plants. She mentions in "House and Garden", in which she ostensibly reforms, that her unique condition has left her unable to bear children.

Later in the series, she would become more and more plant-like, her skin turning grayish-white. Ivy also became more humorous and seductive in personality, coinciding with her genuinely sympathetic relationship with Harley Quinn. Although supposedly dying in the episode "Chemistry," she apparently survived and returned in several spin-off series, including "Static Shock," and the Gotham Girls web-toon, in which she held co-starring role. The character also co-starred in the three-issue comic book miniseries Harley and Ivy, and was given her swan song in the critically acclaimed "Batman Adventures" comic book series, which contains stories about Batman's adventures in Gotham City after a break from the Justice League. Apart from a lobotomized Ivy from an alternate universe, she has never appeared directly on Justice League, to the disappointment of fans. Bruce Timm stated that he turned on pitches for Poison Ivy episodes on Justice League so they could focus on new characters and storylines, only bringing back a minimal amount of villains from previous shows ^*. Ivy might have made a return in Justice League Unlimited, but due to the "Bat Embargo," it is unlikely that she ever will.

Uma Thurman played Poison Ivy in the film Batman and Robin. This incarnation, boasting over-the-top acting, strange costumes and even stranger hair styles, is largely considered the worst version of the character, a sentiment in line with the over-all derision poured upon the film from fans and critcs alike. This Isley was transformed when she was murdered by her mad scientist boss, and soon fell in love with Mr. Freeze, leading to a partnership to destroy Gotham City. She was defeated by Batgirl, incarcerated and presumably frozen by Mr. Freeze as he saw that she betrayed him by nearly killing his near-dead wife.
Piera Coppola currently voices Poison Ivy in the animated TV show, The Batman, complete with a new origin with stronger ties to Barbara Gordon. In this Gotham, Poison Ivy was a young environmental activist, and Barbara Gordon's friend. She convinces Barbara to help her with her "protests," which were actually scouting missions on pollutionary companies for her hired mercenary, the corporate saboteur Temblor. In an attack on one such company, a plant mutagen fell on her during a battle between Temblor and the Batman. She awoke in an ambulance afterward and manifested powers similar to her other incarnations, most notably telepathic plant control, and an ability to exhale mind-controlling spores when she blows a kiss at her desired target. She swiftly turned her powers to furthering her ecoterrorist career, before being stopped by Batman and Barbara, in her debut as Batgirl.
Poison Ivy has also appeared in most of the Batman video games over the years. She appeared as a boss in Batman: The Animated Series, The Adventures of Batman & Robin for the Super NES, The Adventures of Batman & Robin for the Sega CD, the video game adaptation of the movie Batman & Robin, Batman Vengeance and Batman: Dark Tomorrow. In most of these games Ivy does not fight Batman directly and usually watches in the background while Batman fights one of her plant monsters. In The Adventures of Batman & Robin for the Sega CD and Batman Vengeance, Dianne Pershing reprised her role from Batman: The Animated Series.

Trivia

Pamela Isley aka Poison Ivy has been portrayed as a love interest for Batman in some comics. In one comic, Ivy was robbing a charity gala Bruce Wayne was attending. Ivy's first kiss was poison, the second its antidote. When they first meet, Ivy's toxic lips planted a seed of toxic rapture in Bruce. But when she later kissed a dying Dark Knight, Ivy unknowingly cured her intended victim and established a budding romantic tension between them.
Creator Robert Kanigher modelled Poison Ivy after Bettie Page, giving her the same haircut and Southern drawl as Page. In her first appearances in 1966, no origin was developed; she was merely a temptress. At her first appearance, her costume was a one-piece, strapless green bathing suit covered with leaves. Leaves also formed her bracelets, necklace and crown. She also wore green high heels and yellow-green nylon stockings with leaves painted on them. These particulars changed somewhat when she re-appeared.
Failing to catch on as a character, Ivy was not heard of again until the rise of feminism brought the need for a greater number of more independent female villains in the series. She was also used to replace the increasingly sympathetic Catwoman as a clearly antagonistic female supervillain foil for Batman, and then made further appearances in the Batman comic book series and in Suicide Squad. An origin story was later concocted for her.
In Batman: The Animated Series, a shot of Pamela Isley's identification card shows her height as 5'2"(1.57m).
Poison Ivy has on several occasions been connected to the goddess Demeter.
According to the web toon Gotham Girls, fake flowers are her greatest pet peeve.
Artist Jim Lee draws her with no toes, as in her bare feet are in the shape of the "elf shoes" she sometimes wears. This has never been made a point of observation, and a reason why has never been given.
Grows all her own costumes.
According to the Birds of Prey arc Of Like Minds, a guard at Arkham takes pictures of her in the showers without her knowledge and sells them to tabloids.
Is one of the handful of individuals who is completely immune to the Joker's laughing gas.
The Poison Ivy character may have been partly inspired by Rappaccini's Daughter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The similarities between the character Beatrice and Ivy are undeniable.

"I would fain have been loved, not feared," murmured Beatrice, sinking down upon the ground.--"But now it matters not; I am going, father, where the evil, which thou hast striven to mingle with my being, will pass away like a dream--like the fragrance of these poisonous flowers, which will no longer taint my breath among the flowers of Eden. Farewell, Giovanni! Thy words of hatred are like lead within my heart--but they, too, will fall away as I ascend. Oh, was there not, from the first, more poison in thy nature than in mine?"

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