DC Characters

Poison Ivy

Current Events: The New 52

Ivy joins Black Canary's Birds of Prey along with Katana and Starling
Following the 2011 reboot of the DC Universe, Poison Ivy was unexpectedly asked by Black Canary to join the new Birds of Prey team. Ivy accepted, but her villainous reputation did not sit well with teammates Starling and Katana, both of whom attacked Ivy on first sight. Ivy easily fended off their attacks and became a member of the Birds of Prey. However, Poison Ivy went on to betray the team, along with Batgirl and blackmailed them into helping her with her Eco-terrorism. She was eventually stopped by Katana and booted off the team.

Poison Ivy pops us later in Detective Comics, using her plant-based mental-suggestion powers to manipulate Clayface into believing they were husband and wife. Clayface therefore became her enforcer. This too backfired when Batman found a way to counter Ivy's mind control and restore Clayface to his senses.

Rotworld

Ivy and Deadman fight for The Green in the Rotworld saga
With the march of the army of Rot, Ivy left behind her villainous ways and tried to battle them though she ultimately failed. One of her arms has been rotted but it doesn't seem to affect her function. She appeared before the Swamp Thing on his return from the Rot alongside Deadman, demanding to know who he was though she didn't believe his claims at first. After accepting his claim, she continues to refer to him as a coward for abandoning them to the Rot though she did help him reach the Parliament of Trees. She joined him to battle the Teen Titans who had been turned by the Rot and were attacking the Parliament.

Origin

Silver Age

Pamela Lillian Isley was an attractive and talented botanist who lived in Seattle. She became seduced by a criminal named Marc LeGrande, who needed her to assist him in stealing an Egyptian artifact with an ancient herb inside it. After the crime was committed, Legrande decided that Isley knew too much to be allowed to live, so he poisoned her with the herb inside the artifact.

Fortunately for Isley, she survived and became immune to all manner of toxins and diseases. She realized that she was completely unaffected by certain plant-based hypnotic toxins that she could use to control others. Calling herself Poison Ivy, she began wearing a revealing green plant-like costume and turned to a life of crime, combining her natural allure with hypnotic plant toxins in order to manipulate people (particularly men) into doing her bidding. After moving to Gotham City, she inevitably came into conflict with Gotham's greatest crime-fighter, Batman. Ivy nearly seduced Batman into becoming her partner-in-crime during their first encounter, and went on to become one of his most dangerous foes.

Modern Age

Poison Ivy's origin was significantly retconned after DC's universe-changing Crisis on Infinite Earths storyline in 1985. Pamela Isley was now the beautiful daughter of wealthy parents from Seattle, but she was emotionally quite distant from them. Intellectually brilliant but shy and withdrawn, she immersed herself in advanced botanical biochemistry in college, proving to be a exemplary student with an unusual affinity for the world of plants. Unfortunately, Isley became seduced by her college professor, Dr. Jason Woodrue (who later became the villainous Floronic Man). As part of a twisted experiment, Woodrue injected Isley with a deadly plant-based poison, which caused her physiology to dramatically transform.

Isley nearly died twice from the poisoning, and it also resulted in her never being able to bear children. A further side effect of the poisoning was that it drove her insane to the point where she believed she was the 'mother nature' of the plant world, and all plants were her 'children.' Woodrue abandoned Isley and fled from the authorities while she was hospitalized. After Isley was released from the hospital, she developed pronounced mood swings due to what the professor had done to her. She tried to resume her college career and even found a new boyfriend, but her mental state deteriorated further when her boyfriend died in a car accident after suffering a mysterious fungal overgrowth (the first manifestation of her plant-based powers). Deciding she needed a fresh start elsewhere, Isley dropped out of college and moved to Gotham City. But at that point, Isley's psychotic mentality finally overcame her. She took up the identity of Poison Ivy and adopted a revealing green one-piece costume much like the pre-Crisis version of the character. Her first criminal act was to hold the city hostage with deadly plant spores of her own creation until the city's leadership gave her a massive sum of money. Unfortunately for Ivy, this was the same year that Batman began operating in Gotham. He thwarted Ivy's scheme and defeated her, after which she was imprisoned in Arkham Asylum. The encounter sparked Ivy's ongoing obsession with Batman, because he was the one man she could not easily gain control over.