@SpideyIvyDaredevilFan26: Very interesting point. Ivy should be a Anti-Hero like Vemon (Eddie Brock), Punisher or the Red Hood. No I'm not going to start boycotting everthing Batman but I'm just saying you do have a good point.
Poison Ivy
Character » Poison Ivy appears in 1964 issues.
A brilliant botanical biochemist, Pamela Isley is a fervent eco-terrorist out to save the world's plant life by any means necessary. She often finds herself at odds with Batman, though they have, on occasion, fought on the same side.
Why the hell is Ivy a villain?
@ivygirl851 said:
She needs to become an antihero similar to Punisher. Her goal is righteous, it's her methods that make her a villain. Does anyone know why they kicked her out of BoP? That seemed too rushed and left HUGE plot gaps.
@ivygirl851 said:
@avenging_x_bolt: Most of the times her crimes are not that different than those of The Punisher, yet The Punisher is considered a hero. Also she rarely kills anymore. Her actions save thousands of lives. You can't disagree on that.
YES, THANK you!! You are one of my new favorite viners!
Short version of who Ivy is as a character
After reading alot of stories that feature her, i believe that a good potrayal of her character would show her to be both a "destructive" eco extremist to those that are outside of her pheromones range and a "domineering" seductress to those that are able to come close to her
(her to-do list before coming up with a eco extremism scheme or in her down time after having carried out the eco extremism scheme: harvests men to make them fulfill Ivy's simple needs like plant food & fertilizers or test subjects for her new experiment or sex objects for one night, etc...)
(her usual eco extremism schemes: targets people for harming plant / vehicles & facilities for producing smoke / skyscrapers for blocking sunlight / military bases for testing weapons AND sets deadly traps in plant-life areas (forest, park, golf course etc...)
In short, an Anti-Villain who are on the side of evil but does not kill people indiscriminately. She would spare those that care about plant-life & are knowledgable about it and those that are simply too defenseless. Nevertheless her kill count is still really high & probably in the hundreds (restaurants worth of people for eating salad & plant components, factories worth of people for producing smoke, skyscrapers worth of people for blocking sunlight, military bases worth of people for testing weapons, crowds of people within her sight since Ivy sees people as disgusting pests and gets very agitated whenever there are too many pests within her sight, etc...
For an anti hero depiction of Ivy, she could be written to be more selective in the types of men she would harvest and she would target people & facilties not for just harming plant or producing smoke but for harming alot of plants or producing too much smoke and destroys skyscrapers without people in them and set deadly traps in forest only instead of plant-life areas.
To me, an anti hero Ivy is usually to make Ivy less despicable to readers but anti villain Ivy is more true to her character. The Ivy that sees men as objects to fulfill her simple needs and does not let people get away with harming a plant nor allow them to harm it.
A full heroic Ivy is a complete misunderstanding of the character. Ivy is a brilliant mind who does come up with inventions (like mutant plants for civilian uses) that do help the enviroment & can collaberate with heroes to fight agaisnt a great common threat that harms both humans & plants. She always has potential for great good but can never be a truly heroic character due to her not letting go of her past trauma which were inflicted by domineering male figures and her feeling the pain of the planet & having the memories of how much greener the planet was. In elseworld stories where most of humanity are extinct, she would actually become a much nicer person.
Long version of who Ivy is as a character
Ivy was originally written to simply be a villain - a criminal that Batman has to fight against. Later on other writers added more depth to her character and its really dependent on the writers whether she would be portrayed as someone who is seemingly pure evil because she has absolutely no regards for human lives (even taking pleasures of seeing their deaths by her plants) and simply wants to take over Gotham / the world with her plants OR someone who has a noble goal of stopping destruction of planet by humanity but has extreme methods (like genocide of urban population, mind controlling population, mind control & murder of innocents who stand in her way or murder of individuals that by laws dont deserve capitol punishment, sabotaging facilities, turning parks & forests into her domain that is full of traps, etc...). Villains see themselves as heroes of their own stories and Ivy is a good example for that. Villains see that the more extreme their actions can be, the quicker they can achieve their noble goal. By piecing all the timelines together and all her different origin stories, we can see the what the main versions of the character Poison Ivy represent. At her core, Ivy feels herself to be an abused victim, a somewhat emotionally broken, mentally scarred person and not a villain. Its the world of men that she blames on for all the pain that she went through. She didn't start off as an misanthrope by nature and her initial goal for committing crimes was just to quickly make enough money to create a green paradise for herself and live in isolation with all her creations but that place eventually ended up in flames due to human interference (mercenary men having chosen her green paradise to test their weapon). The destruction of her beloved green paradise makes her become more hateful towards humanity and sets her down on the path of being an avenger of nature against humanity. She blames on humanity for destruction of her plants paradise instead of just the few humans that destroyed it just like how Bruce blames on crime for the loss of his parents instead of just the one criminal that shot them. The pain of losing her plant paradise to mercenery men was too great for her to ever overcome with just the killing of the few humans that destroyed her plant paradise just like how the pain of losing his parents to a thug was too great for Bruce to ever overcome with just the arrest of the one criminal that shot his parents. Bruce will never let go of the night where he was victimized by a criminal, where he was a victim of crime. He has to fight against all those criminals (especially the kind of criminals that commit murder). He can never let them commit any more crime. He has to fight against crime. Batman will always have the hatred of crime in him. Bruce will never stop battling against the crime that took the lives of his parents even when he knows he can never win the war on crime. However when you dont look at plants from a human perspective and instead look at them from a plant loving person perspective, humanity is indeed terrible to plants. Ivy's love for plant-life is so deep to the point that she would never want to suffer the pain of losing another plant in her sight & use the most extreme methods to protect plant-life. Once you love something too much, you would be crazy enough to do anything to protect the thing you love. And its this love for plant-life that makes her perceive humans to be the real criminals, monsters, murderers that exploit and kill her beloved & defenseless plants children. Her cruelty is in a sense a response, a reaction to the never ending destruction of nature by humanity. Ivy sees that humanity has abused plants for so long and she wants to change that. Ivy has a strong love for defenseless plant but doesnt care about most humans. She wants humanity to care about plant-life as much as she cares about it but the vast majority of humanity don't and only see her as a crazy, delusional woman who is obsessed with plant. She believes her extreme methods to be the most effective methods, especially when her voice is only of a small minority among the uncaring masses. She would go as far as killing people just for snapping a few vines. And if she is known for killing individuals just for snapping a few vines, people would then realize that they have to care about plant-life in the same way she cares about it or face their own death by her hands. If she is known for killing all those that stand in her way, who else would dare to stop her from killing whom she wants to kill? So she justifies the high kill counts caused by her actions as a small price to pay for the greater good of the environment, as a way of sending a clear message to the world to protect the planet or else face retribution from her. Ivy doesn't shy away from being an eco terrorist that strikes terror into corporations, people working at polluting facilities or living in urban cities filled with skyscrapers. She believes in her cause being the most righteous one because she sees herself as a one woman crusader for nature, a guardian of the Green - a selfless lonely defender for the most defenseless & most exploited life form out there. The plants are being murdered and their cry for help can not be heard by humans but only by very few people with plant powers like her but only she is willing to go to the extreme to to save the planet. She feels that most of her killings are not mindless killings without a purpose and even though a minority of her killings is for selfish reasons (turning male victims into plant food & fertilzers or sex objects or test subjects for her poison & hybridization experiments, using people as hostages to get her out of jail/difficult situation, etc..) or just unfortunate casualties from those that stand in her way & prevent her from escaping from jail/police, the majority of her killings is selective killings for the greater good of protecting the Green. Her perception of good & evil goes beyond what we perceive as a human's morality but still makes sense in the context of the abused vs the abusers, the exploited vs the exploiters, the weaker vs the stronger. In short, her perception of evil vs good is the domineering vs the defenseless. And her killing pattern is reflective of her different level of hatred and different level of empathy towards different types of humans (highest level of hatred towards domineering, weapon using / rich males vs highest level of empathy towards children who are defenseless against domineering males or need a mother figure) and her personal relationships with others (like Harley). On the contrary, Batman has the highest level of hatred towards murderous criminals and highest level of empathy towards innocents suffering from tragedies but still preserves his no killing rule no matter how much hatred he has for someone and how he values his own moral code over his relationships with others.
What makes PI a character of her own is that she hates men because she was emotionally manipulated and hurt by them - first by a man whom she respected & trusted. The scar of getting betrayed by her crush cut her heart deep enough to make her feel that she could never find true love ever again and make her become more distrustful and cold hearted towards men. She cared about a man too much, paid the price for having trusted & helped him and was forever hurt by the experience. Her 1st crush failed her and makes her become somewhat of a woman scorned. Whenever she sees that a man is using sweet words to gain her trust, she would kill them due to her trauma of having been used & betrayed by such kind of men. Thats why you see in her early comics appearances, she used the word "mankind" and not "hummanity". Even later on as she paid men to carry out her scheme, she still ended up getting ganged up by them due to them having perceived her as a weak lone woman. So Ivy knows what it feels like to be a weak & vulnerable victim against men who were stronger than her or had more power than her. When you count in the new 52 origins story, her character has a tragic childhood where her child self had an abusive & controlling father, a gardening hobby that is shared with only her mother and didn't bond much with anyone outside of her household due to her child self having a poor skin condition that forced her to be put under constant care by her stay-at-home mother & her being an introvert that was into plants more than people. The cops who were supposed to be there to stop her father from abusing her mother were never there throughout her childhood but only appeared to take her father into prison after he had murdered her mother. The inefficiency of the law enforcement in preventing the abuse against her mother & her feeling that the laws not punishing her abusive dad enough makes her lose faith in laws enforcement and feel much more compelled to seek revenge by her own self and deal with things in her own ways instead of going with the laws.The traumatic experience of getting abused and emotionally manipulated by the horrible, domineering men that was close to her in her life - getting abused her father in nu52 or getting emotionally manipulated & hurt by the man that she had a crush on in pre-52 simply make her become unsympathetic to other men in general. Due to having suffered from the worst of men, Ivy doesn't want any woman close to her to suffer the same horrible things that horrible, domineering men did to her and therefore has the inclination to help HQ whom she has gotten to know a lot more and bonded with over the years and sees as a victim of abuse by a man in a relationship. Ivy sympathizes with Harley more than other characters could sympathize with Harley because like Harley, Ivy used to be emotionally manipulated & abused by men as well. When Ivy was in Arkham, she used her tragic past to play herself as a victim and her seduction skill to make men in Arkham trust & sympathize with her enough to do certain things for her despite them having known her crimes. Later on as Ivy improved her seduction skill and acquired mind controlling pheromones, she went from being a victim of manipulation & abusement by horrible, domineering men to someone who enjoys being a men manipulator & abuser. Unlike Batman who went from being a victim of crime to being a protector of innocent people against criminals, Ivy went from being a victim of horrible, domineering men to being a victimizer of innocent men. She enjoys being a woman who controls men - men that are stronger than her or have more power than her. She gets pleasure from making men do her bidding or hurting them. The more men she is able to seduce and use her mind controlling pheromones on, the more she sees men as easy prey to be emotionally manipulated & hurt by her. Her mind cant let go the past where she was a victim of domineering male figures- the past where her father made her & her mother to be submissive to him (or the past in pre-52 where her crush who emotionally manipulates her to be his test subject for a painful experiment). Ivy already saw from the abusive relationship between her mother and father the dominance that men could have over women especially the women that have become dependent on their men and have emotional attachment to their men. Then there was a time where she settled on an island and created a plant paradise just to witness it destroyed by mercenery men. When it was destroyed, Ivy has to suffer another pain caused by men again. The painful experience makes Ivy feel even more justified in her twisted ways of dominating men because Ivy sees nature to be in the same position as feminity - both are dominated by masculinity. And she embodies both. She is a woman that cares about her defenseless plants deeply to the point of her seeing them as her babies & being protective of them. Plants are just like her - victims of men. Ivy doesn't have sympathy for men because she has the traumatic experiences of having been emotionally manipulated and abused by men close to her in her past and having witnessed her plant paradise destroyed by mercenary men. Doing harm to other men gives her a distinct satisfaction because she is sharing the trauma she is suffering from to other men. She doesn't want to feel alone in suffering such injustice & such trauma inflicted onto her by horrible, domineering men in her past therefore she feels other men have to suffer much more than she does and does not want other defenseless plants to be destroyed in the same way her plant paradise was destroyed. The trauma inflicted onto her by horrible, domineering men & nature destroying male soldiers in her past was so great that it drives her to dominate other innocent men in her twisted ways & protect all plants from being harmed by humans instead of just going after the few men that were responsible for her personal trauma & the destruction of her plant paradise. While Isley's demon is the horrible, domineering men in her past & & male soldiers who destroyed her plant paradise, Bruce's demon is the criminal that shot down his parents. Fighting other criminals gives Bruce a distinct satisfaction because he is sharing the trauma that he is suffering from to other criminals. Bruce doesn't want to feel alone in suffering such injustice & such trauma inflicted onto him by one criminal therefore he wants to fight against all those criminals for having committed crimes (especially the kind of criminals that commit murder) as much as he wants to fight against the one criminal for having murdered his parents and more importantly Bruce does not want other innocent people to suffer from the same pain of losing one's parents like him. The trauma inflicted onto him by a thug was so great that it drives him to become a crime fighter & protect innocent people from being harmed by criminals instead of just going after the one thug that was responsible for his parents' death. Batman is vengeance, not only vengeance for the death of his loved ones but also for the death of the loved ones of other innocent people against the criminal underworld. To Batman, all criminals (especially the kind of criminals that commit murder) are like the one criminal that shot down his parents. Batman and Ivy are both monsters of vengeance but Batman is the monster on the side of the laws while she isn't, she is a monster on the side of plants. Batman feels the pain of losing loved ones while Ivy feels the pain of the planet. Batman has a criminals fighting preference due to the trauma that a thug inflicted on him while Ivy develops a men killing preference due to the trauma that men inflicted on her. Batman instills fear onto criminals while she strikes terror onto those that harm plant-life the most (like those working at polluting factories / living in overcrowded urban areas and those working for big corporations like ceos, politicians) and those that harm plant-life in her presence. Because Ivy is a monster on the side of plant, she is easy to understand just like how Bruce is a monster on the side of the laws. She punishes those committing crime against nature (crimes like stepping on grass, driving cars, working in factories or big corporations, building skyscrapers that block sunlight etc...) while he fights against those committing crime against the laws. Batman is about preventing the suffering of other humans while Ivy is about ending the suffering of plant-life. She is Batman in another form, a more emotional side of him, a psychological mirror to him but you want Batman to stop her because Batman is the monster on your side while she is the monster on the opposite side. You don't want Batman to act purely on anger & hatred because it would get innocent bystanders harmed or killed as side casualties. Ivy is about delivering painful deaths based on one's level of sadistic pleasure in killing others and then one’s level of hatred of others while Bruce is about delivering justice based on laws but not without humanity. Ivy thinks human lives don’t matter due to her own insanity of seeing plant-life being more pure and precious than human-life vs Batman thinks humanoid plants don’t matter so that he would not be restricted by his no kill code. Her humanoid plants being melted by his weapon or dehydrated by his gas grenades are great examples of how brutal Batman would deal with criminals if he doesn’t have a no kill code. Batman has no kill code because of his belief in the good coming from the worst kind of humans. He believes people can be rehabilitated, can change for the better. Also Batman is the guy who witnessed the murder of his parents so he cant bring himself to kill other people without him feeling guilt and thinking of himself being like the murderer that shot his parents. Furthermore he is afraid of finding satisfaction in the killing of others. However Ivy brings out the Batman that kills. Ivy is one of the very few villains who can show the readers the darker side of Batman - a Batman without no killing code. If you replace the word "men" or "mankind" or "people" in her dialogues with the word "criminals" or "crime", you see Batman in her. If you replace the word "plant" in her dialogues with the word "people", the words "my children", "my babies" in her dialogues with the words "my parents", you see Bruce in her. The words "murderer" or "monster" that Ivy yells out every time she sees people kill plant are equivalent to the "murderer" or "monster" that Bruce thinks of every time he sees criminals shoot people. To make it more easy to imagine, basically every time that Ivy sees defenseless plants killed by people and yells out "monster" or "murderer" is every time that Bruce sees innocent people shot by criminals and thinks of the "monster" or the "murderer" that shot his parents. I don't think Bruce has gotten over such pain of losing his parents, which is why he is so motivated to fight crime. In fact, it is the pain of losing his parents to a thug being so great that it motivates him to become a crime fighter in the first place. Everytime he sees a person kills other people for a non self defense purpose, he sees that person being like the criminal that shot down his parents and would come to fight against that person. But more importantly Batman understands the pain of losing loved ones and therefore wants to prevent the same thing from happening to other people. Because he suffers from trauma, he doesnt want others to suffer like he does. In contrast, his villains wants to share the trauma that were inflicted on them and take away other people's happiness. Because his villains suffer from trauma, they gain pleasure from seeing others suffer & harmed. The crimes committed by his villains are defined by their own traumas as well. Two-Face kills lawyers, Ivy enjoys dominating men in her twisted ways but sympathizes with abused women, Bane hates prison guards & bats but sympathizes with orphans while Batman fights criminals but also wants to protect innocents from being harmed & suffering from tragedies. The parallel between Batman and his villains is how traumatic experience could make someone empathize with and/or be hateful toward different types of people. If Ivy is written to be realistically reactionary to what is really happening in the world, she would be a much more brutal killing machine more than anything.
By appearance, Ivy is basically a ginger witch. Red head with green skin. The green color of her skin is a result of her body having been filled with chlorophyll and various poisons. Even though her plant powers are versatile, she has weaknesses that plants also have like lack of sunlight exposure, herbicide, cold temperature etc. She is nicknamed as the wicked witch of the Green. While Bruce plays his billionaire playboy persona to hook up with other ladies, Ivy excels at putting men under her love spell and giving them her kiss of death to satisfy her own libido. At first, she only wanted to kill the men that did wrong to her in the past & men who are guilty of destroying plant-life. Her first kill with her kiss of death in the new 52 was her father and the kill was out of vengeance. Then the 2nd origins story, she killed a high profile corporate man who was responsible for making farmers lives miserable and destroying plant-life on the lands. But as she kills more men, it becomes easier for her to not care about the cruel acts she commits against men and not feel anything for their deaths. She does not need even a good reason to kill a man anymore. She does not need to make a clear distinction about which types of men that she should kill. Sometime she kills a few ordinary men that she passes by on the streets without much reasoning. Killing and controlling men have become some sort of a hobby to her. To her, men are all easy prey for her manipulate, control and kill. The only distinction that matters is what types of men are her favorite preys. Men who come close to her would be put under Ivy's love spell to either be fed immidiately to her hungry carnivorous plants or be mind controlled puppets to do what she wants them to do (like doing dirty works for her or fulfilling Ivy's simple needs by being her sex objects for the night / test subjects for her new experiment) and once they are out of their usefulness to her, she plays with their feelings, gives them the sexual pleasure that they want from her and satisfies her own libido as well - her final kiss but with the deadly toxin of contempt, punishment & hatred instead of affection. Her kiss mark is a signature for her male victims, a symbolic gesture of men's thirst for sexual pleasure from her and her being in control of men. Her kiss mark shows that men want her and no men can resist her control. Ivy doesn't see herself as any ordinary woman but a woman whom every man wants and a woman who controls men and shows that her control of them is complete to the point that they would do anything for her. Even without her mind controlling pheromones, she still has enough seduction & manipulation skill to gets close to and poisons rich men with her kiss so that she could steal their wealth. As she witnesses more destruction of the environment, she sees men for the worse in them rather than the better - the most violent, worst nature offenders among humanity, the group that that makes up the majority of lumberjacks, of nature destructive soldiers, of coperate leaders & the political class and therefore the most deserving of her punishment. Men are the strongest living beings that dominate all other weaker living beings while Ivy is more protective of those being under her care or defenseless against the stronger abusers. The destruction of the environment is conducted by men more than any other group of humans, therefore killing men isnt just for her own personal twisted pleasure but also for a noble goal in her mind. Its not just her being this woman scorned anymore but its men being the greatest threat to nature with all their muscle, weapons & power to dominate nature more than any other group of humanity. The fewer men (especially men with weapon or power) there are, the less nature destructive wars there are and the more peaceful the world becomes. Even though she hates men in general, she doesn't find pleasure in killing some men that she sees as defenseless, helpless (like wounded men). Killing all men on her sight isn't what she wants to do. The type of men that Ivy hates the most and finds the most pleasure in killing them are corporate men, male politicians, loggers. Then the second type of men that she hates to the lesser degree are cops & soldiers because they always stand in her way of commiting crimes and eco terrorrism. Ivy finds more pleasure in killing certain types of men and even unsuspecting random men on the street but not a defenseless, helpless men. Not only Ivy would likely to spare the type of men who are defenseless, helpless, Ivy would also likely spare another type of humans regardless of their genders - rural farmers since they have knowledge of plant-life and care about it more than other types of humans and dont live in urban centers, where the main source of pollution are. Also rural farmers dont gather in crowd so Ivy's misanthropy is much lessened against them. Her being this men killing machine is villainous but by today standards it would make her an empowering feminist icon. Being a "serial killing" seductress is her way of asserting total dominance over men. However there was a rare occasion where she showed compassion to a man (but a dying, helpless man) by giving him a merciful painless death with her kiss due to her knowing him as a good father who cared for his daughter.
However there is one man that she doesn't hate and that man is Batman because Ivy is somewhat obsessed with him as he was the only man whom she can never make to want her like she did to many other men. At one point she believed the reason for Batman to have saved her from explosions & other life threatening dangers is that Batman truly loved her. In her life experience, there was no other man (including the man she had a crush on) could have selflessly helped her as much as what Batman did for her. Batman was always strong willed enough to have never fallen for her sexual charm yet many of the things he did for her was so selfless despite her having almost killed him for several times so she came to believe that it must have been due to him having truly loved her to make him not hold any grudge against her and willingly & selflessly save her from the explosions & other life threatening dangers but Batman simply replied that she didn't know what love from him was and the readers could understand the real reason for him to have saved her was that Batman is just a very heroic noble guy that wants to save everyone, including the criminals that he fought against and he wants to his villains to be reformed. Batman doesn't love Ivy and Ivy mistakes her lust for Batman as love. At one point, she views Batman not as her main foe whom she should devote most of her time planning to get rid of but as a hindrance to her greater plan. Ivy is somewhat obsessed about him and sees him as the only special man for her, not truly loving him in a sense that mentally healthy normal human being would love another. She wants Batman to want her. She wants him to always admire her for her beauty, smart & abilities. She wants him to be another lover of hers, not him as a person of his own. This is somewhat similar to how Talia loves the idea of having Batman as her husband in the same way that Ra's loves the idea of having Batman as his heir but Talia does not really love Bruce as a person and usually calls him "my beloved". Nevertheless Ivy's some sort of obsession with Batman prevent Ivy from having a strong friendship with Catwoman like the one that Ivy has with Harley. Ivy cant accept that Selina being the only woman who can make Batman have feelings for Catwoman while Ivy being this woman who excels at putting men under her love spell cant simply do the same to Batman. Catwoman is able to play with the feelings of a man whom Ivy can not put under her love spell. Besides Catwoman is more of an independent woman who can not be as easily manipulated as Harley by a domineering personality like Ivy. Catwoman is an independent, "play hard to get" woman while Ivy is a domineering, possessive female. But because of how useful of a thief Catwoman is and how Catwoman's care of catlife can be aligned with Ivy's care of plantlife into protecting wild nature, Ivy still partners up with Catwoman in certain heists (especially heists that requires heavywork to take out armed personnels) and Catwoman would help Ivy in certain eco terrorism schemes that involve preserving nature (but not to the point of plant supermacy over other species). Ivy recognizes that Catwoman being a good friend for Harley - a good friend for her best friend/love. But when it comes to down to whether Ivy can fully trust Catwoman or not, Ivy simply doesnt. When it comes to Joker, Ivy simply hates Joker too much to even make him fall for her pheromones because not only he abuses woman but also more imporantly he thrives on chaos, which stand against Ivy's vision of natural order. Then there is an unexplored dynamic between Ivy and Mr.Freeze. In movie Batman & Robin, the movie Ivy had taken advantage of Mr.Freeze's trust but if Ivy is potrayed to be true to her character, she would not be cruel towards Mr.Freeze due to his admirable loyalty to his wife and would see that she is similar to Mr Freeze in being fiercely determined to protect & save the thing that they care about but at the same time she would want Mr.Freeze to forget Nora so that Ivy can be that woman that Victor should be obssessed about, not Nora.
Ivy does kill women but her killing of women usually have reasons (for committing crimes against nature like driving cars, stepping on grass or standing in her way, residing in polluting urban areas, entering Ivy's garden or preventing Ivy from escaping or other selfish/wrong reasons) or under more specific circumstances (gathering into a large crowd in Ivy sight, accompanying with the men Ivy meets in clubs/bars to plants, being in a park that Ivy wants to claim as her main domain, being targets to a villain that Ivy is cooperating with). Ivy's killing of women are less random than her killing of men and more targeted (so women are often victims of larger schemes than just random killing purely for Ivy's own sadistic pleasure and even when its purely for Ivy's sadistic pleasure, women are still victims under more specific circumstances like accompanying with the men Ivy meets in club/bar). But such killing of women doesn't give her as much pleasure as killing of men because she doesn't hate women as much as she hates men and actually feel sympathetic to the kind of women that she knows is suffering from abuse or defenseless against male abusers and would not be cruel to that kind of woman (or possibly even be protective to that kind of woman because she sees herself in those women). In the new 52, she used her vines to stop a man - who was a stranger to Ivy - from hitting his wife. In pre 52, when Harley crashed into Ivy's park and was buried under the rubble, Ivy didn't want to kill nor leave a helpless Harley - whom she knows - to die but felt compelled to heal her and even gave her a serum to boost her strength, agility and immunity to toxin, literally empowered Harley. If it had been a helpless random man that crashed into Ivy's park, Ivy would have not help him to that much extent as she did to Harley and left him to die or used him as a puppet instead of being curious enough to ask why he got there. Ivy wouldn't kill a man whom she deems as defenseless, helpless (due to not having enjoyment in such kill not because of her conscience) but wouldn't help him as much as she would help a helpless, abused woman that Harley was. Feminity is like nature - being under dominance of masculinty. In some cases, women are defenseless against their male abusers. When her criminal schemes do not involve killing people but about mind controlling people to do dirty works for her or robbing people's personal wealth then women are spared from being used by her as mind controlled puppets or not considered to be the main targets for robbery. Ivy does not seek to dominate women to the same extent she wants to dominate men in her twisted ways. However women are still a large part of nature destroying humanity so to Ivy, the life of a woman (besides Harley and maybe Selina) is not more valuable nor more worthy of her protection and care than the life of a plant. Women are lesser abusers to plants and Ivy sometimes prefers taking advantage of the trust from the useful women that she gets to know & manipulating them to fight against or even kill the bigger abusers against nature that are men (with corperate & politician men being at the top) like how she used the Birds of Prey as her puppets & used her Plant Perennial to snap the neck of the male drug dealer that accompanied with them but not anyone from Birds of Prey. Also there was the time where she used Catwoman as her puppet to steal money for her. But personal wealth is not higher end of her crime motive but rather means to an end (buying fertilizers, donating to reforestation fund, funding her eco terrorism efforts). If the women whom she manipulated to help her commit petty crimes & eco terrorism turn against her & fight her, she will just dispose of them. To those women whom Ivy deems as useful to her, she would not bother to save them when there is danger happening to them. Ivy is only protective to the kind of women that suffers from abuse. And if you are a domineering type of woman, Ivy would kill you. Ivy's relationship with Harley is that Ivy being both manipulative and protective of Harley. Ivy sympathizes with an abused woman like Harley but also wants to use her to strike against her male foes. Ivy has that maternalistic instincts while Harley is whimsical and childlike at times. Despite being able to be a protective figure to the thing or the people Ivy cares about, she is still a sadistic killer, therefore her relationship with Harley is not gonna be something without abuse from Ivy due to Ivy still being a domineering, violent individual - more domineering than normal humans, more violent than normal humans and can subconciously poison people around her. Also Ivy is tempermental, emotionally unstable so her rage could be triggered more easily and Ivy holds her grudge longer. The relationship between Harly and Ivy does not make Ivy become selfless. Ivy cares about Harley in Ivy own selfish ways. Ivy's brand of villainy is men serial killing as a normal morning routine, committing eco terrorism at night time and only at certain seasonal times would she want to commit urban population genocide. Ivy gains sadistic pleasure by painfully killing men (after luring in unsuspecting male strangers) and her sadistic pleasure doesn't often need to be derived from the painful killings of women. However in Ivy's rountine killing of men for her sadistic pleasure, women can sometimes end up as side victims (like Ivy feeding male & female humans that she harvests from clubs/bars to her plants).
Although Ivy is cruel enough to kill women for committing crimes against nature or due to her personal feelings towards them and for other reasons that i mentioned before, she still prevents herself from killing a random woman without reason. At one time Ivy said to a female therapist at Arkham that she could kill her with a single touch but in the end she still cooperated with the female therapist because there was simply no reason for her to kill the female therapist in the Asylum at that time. Ivy's killing intent towards women being weaker than men is why a female cop was assigned to guard Ivy next her bedside. Ivy trusts a woman more than a man due to deep scar of betrayal and past abuse by men against her. Ivy is simply much more vengeful against men than against women. Killing a random woman on a street is not something she would do as often as killing a random man on a street. So Ivy could kill a man without any reason and a woman with a wrong/selfish reason or under more specific circumstances (women accompanying with the men Ivy meets in clubs/bars) but not a random woman without reason. Her valuing a woman's life to be higher than a man's life and not having a stronger killing intent towards women than men could be due to a "sisterhood" feeling but at the same time does make sense from a moral viewpoint that men are more expandable than women due to women being the main mean of reproduction for humanity while most men arent. Ivy not having a stronger killing intent towards women than men parallels to how Bruce not being harsher to his female villains than male villains. Also as a character who is known for delivering extreme punishment, Ivy isn't someone who would take manipulation, treachery, abusement & betrayal from anyone else lightly at all (which is why she almost killed Catwoman for having sided with Batman to capture her).
But PI is softer on children because children are defenseless humans and she sees herself as a mother figure. If a stranger child enters Ivy's plant domain, she would not straight up kill them. If Ivy sees a child suffering from abuse by men whom are strangers to her, she would protect the child from such abuse. If a child becomes an orphan and seeks her help, she would feel compelled to be a mother figure to the children that lack a mother figure due to Ivy's own experience of having lost her mother when she was a child. She has a desire of being a mother figure and CoLD comics shows that she was willing to create plant babies so that she could have the children of her own image. However Ivy is not a role model for a good mother figure because whenever her plant children disobey her, she would lock them up as a form of punishment. Ivy can be protective to those she cares about but she is ultimately not a role model for other mothers. Ivy's desire to be a mother figure to her plant children parallels with Bruce's desire to be a father figure to all of his Robins and trains them to be a crime fighter like him. You can see Ivy coming off even as a goddess to the stranger children that encounter her for the first time in the woods or parks or in her gardens but as a villain to the people who work in polluting factories, oil rigs, skyscrapers that block sun light & urban areas, military base etc... Even though Ivy is friendly to stranger children enough to the point of letting them enter her plant domain, that doesn't mean Ivy would stop other criminals that she has connection with from killing stranger children. She would take care of motherless orphans standing in front of her (because she didnt want the orphans to feel abbandoned in the same way she felt abbandoned by her cold parent during her childhood) or save a child from being abused by a male stranger (because she sees herself in those men abused children) but if its her fellow criminals who do the killing of stranger children (like blowing up a building) as a distraction method for her to escape or Killer Croc trying to eat Robin, she wouldn't stop them. Ivy would also have no problem killing a non defenseless child like the time she tied up Tim Drake, who is not that much of a defenseless human but rather a crime fighter so that the boy could be used as her plaything for the night. It seems that Ivy is friendly to stranger children in general but would only be protective to the kind of children that she knows suffer from abuse committed by male strangers or the kind of children that need a mother figure but has no problem in killing the likes of crime fighting kids and would not care when stranger children are killed by the hands of her fellow criminals or by other non male humans. Also if a stranger child is dying but not in front of her, she would not feel pity enough to help them. Ivy isnt out there to save every type of kids she meets. Ivy is friendly to stranger children but is not protective of them. She sympathizes with and can be protective to just very few types of kids. Ultimately she cares about plants the most. The presence of stranger children would not stop Ivy from committing eco terrorrism nor prevent her from claiming a place as her main domain. For example, if a child is present in factory that Ivy wants to blow up or in a park that Ivy wants to turn into her main domain, Ivy would not care if that child is gonna be killed by her bomb or her poison. Ivy does not kill children purely for sadistic pleasure but they can still be victims of Ivy's schemes.
The connection between Ivy and a few Gotham rouges is good enough to make Ivy work with them as partners in certain criminal schemes. However Ivy does not see herself to be like them. In fact, she views them as being more petty than her. She is just trying to use them as much as they are trying to use her. Also due to many of the bad guys being mass murderer of human lives, she tends to find herself working with them more than normal humans and heroes. Scarecrow is actually one of the few male Gotham rogues that Ivy can work with in certain schemes (but not in every kind of scheme) since Scarecrow & Plant gimmicks are connected to farmland and Scarecrow's abilites are a constrast to Ivy's abilites. In some way, Scarecrow's and Ivy's abilties complement each other. Scarecrow makes his victims scared of him while Ivy makes her victims feel euphoric and fall in love with her. In Legion of Doom, Lex Luthor sees Ivy as a potential threat that needs to be kept in check or at least monitored since Ivy has a vision for her perfect world that clashes with Lex's tech driven world and the ability to mind control many people including powerful people and to modify the food resources that might become his meal one day. Lex doesnt want to not know what Ivy is planning to do.
In the case of her treatment of animals, you can see that its sort of the same way she treats women but with greater sympathy since animals are not nature destructive as human beings and also suffer under the domination of humanity. She sympathizes with abused animals and partners up with animal characters easily but at the same time she would kill animals that consume plant-life in her sight and wants to mix animal DNA with plant species in order to create hybrids that make plants more superior to all other species, including animal species. Ivy wants plants to be at the top of the food chain. She wants plants to become the ultimate predators while humanity and animal kind to become preys and slaves. Ivy loves plants more than anything because she can communicate with them and has complete control over them while humans & animals are harder for her to control. Ivy sympathizes with plants more than any other species because she sees plants as the most defenseless living beings that are in need of her help the most. Whenever Ivy meets Swamp Thing - the greatest & most powerful avatar of the Green, she simply has a lot of admiration for Swamp Thing but her admiration is not about the good deeds that Swamp Thing has done but rather about the power that Swamp Thing holds over the plant kingdom, about Swamp Thing being an avatar of plant-life. She craves the power that ST has but does not want to be an enemy & fight against Swamp Thing because the conflict would be harmful to plant kingdom. She wants to make him at least do some of her biddings and therefore she settles with having a on and off team up with Swamp Thing.
She has an anarchist vision for the world where the military wouldn't exist to test and use their weapons on any forest and carelessly destroy the nature she wants to preserve, where greed driven large corporations would be stopped from causing industrial pollution that harm the environment and destroy plant-life she deeply cares about, where laws enforcement wouldn't exist to serve the interest of corporate corrupted lawmakers, where factories, oil rigs, cars & other fuel consuming machines etc... would no longer exist to pollute the environment, where buildings would be torn down for sunlight to reach every plant, where plant-life would flourish on concrete buildings in the cities instead of being confined within parks, where the human race would be reduced to those that dont live in overcrowded, polluted urban centers and have knowledge on plant-life like rural farming people (but the rural farming people would become enslaved by her. Also during the population reduction process (which is seen by Ivy as "problem reduction process"), the human populations in urban centers would be among the first to be poisoned by her and become first preys for her hybrid plants but some humans that Ivy encounters on her way and are perceived by her to be so defenseless, so helpless would be spared to just be enslaved by Ivy later on, where men would no longer possess any weapon nor wield any ruling power so that no men could abuse their weapon & power to manipulate and force her & her plants to submit to their will ever again (but the surviving rural farming masses would be enslaved to do ordinary enviromental & gardening tasks and the male population from the rural farming masses would be turned into her love zombie army that would be used as the first fodders agaisnt any threat or get imprisoned and wait to become daily plant food, plant fertilizers / test subject for new poison, new mutant plant / sex object / competitors that fight each other to their death in a killing ground for Ivy's twisted pleasure of dominating men). Ivy's end game is planet supremacy at the cost of both the lives & the free will of both humankind and animal kind. Ivy wants to save and protect the planet but in her own extreme ways and also for her own gains. If you stick to Ivy's older characterization, Ivy does have an endgame but for plants only. Ivy wants defenselesss plants to dominate the Earth and hates most of humanity for harming plants but would not kill those that she comes across and sees as being too defenseless, helpless or those that care about plant-life & are knowledgable about it. The majority of the population of humanity in urban areas & the majority of animal kind would get depopulated and those that are spared by her would be enslaved. She views plant-life as pure because it is defenseless, innocent, could co exist in peace with all other living beings and provide them means of living while humanity is arrogant to other living species, full of greed and force all other living beings to live under the tyranny of humanity and take away everything that nature has given to every living being just to serve the interest of corporations. She loves plants more than other species becauces plants are something she can communicate with and more importantly something that she has complete control over. Her misanthropy is a result of her care for plants being twisted into hatred for those that harm the thing she cares about. While Batman's hatred of crime is a result of his traumatic experience of having witnessed his parents shot by a criminal, Ivy's misandry is a result of her traumatic experience with the men close to her in her life and the suffering of plant-life that is caused by the most domineering group of humanity. Even though she doesn't feel that she belongs to human race, she still has this inner conflict that makes her struggle to live alone with only plants for a long period of time. She will always have a list of humans for her to interact with. Ivy's misanthropy has always made Ivy a complete isolasionist that kills those who enter her garden and makes her more murderous to humans when they gather into a large crowd within her sight, not every single human that she meets. Ivy love for plants is greater than her hatred of humanity. Whenever there is a great threat against both humanity and plants, Ivy would want to eliminate such threat and therefore indirectly protect humanity against such threats.
Her genocidal schemes, which mostly target urban populaces, are not something that Ivy feel motivated enough to carry out in a consistent basis but rather from time to time. Ivy usually finds enjoyment in men serial killing & enacting eco terrorism schemes where Ivy kills individuals personally and sabotages facilities. But when she is at her most cycnical, most angry self during a year due to S.A.D, men serial killing & comitting eco terrorism would not make her feel good enough. The genocidal schemes come up when Ivy is at her most cycnical, most angry self during a year or when humanity or population of Gothamites have crossed certain lines to Ivy (like destroying Ivy's garden) making her feel provoked. When she isnt at her most cynical, most angry self during a year nor in a provoked state, she uses her genocidal weapons / serums as a form of coercion of other heroes or other people into helping her commit eco terrorism. Ivy does suffer from a mental illness called S.A.D but the way she chooses to deal with it is what makes her a villain. She copes with her more cynical, more angry self during a year by comitting more killings or even genocide to make herself feel better. She isnt evil because of a mental illness. The mental illness exacerbates her evil. The difference between Batman and his villains is how he copes with his own trauma versus how his villains cope with their traumas / mental illnesses. The traumas, mental illnesses that the villains suffer from exacerbate their evil while the trauma that Batman suffers from makes him want to prevent others from suffering like he does. When villains suffer from mental illnesses, they cope with them by committing more crimes because the villains find the most enjoyment out of committing crimes than doing other stuffs. Nevertheless even when Ivy isnt at her most cynical, most angry self during a year and Gotham/humanity suffers from a plague or other natural disasters, she would still gladly be the one to spread it much wider since she sees that as nature judgement on humanity. Even when she isnt at her most cycnical, most angry self but when some people come up with mass genocide schemes and offer her a good fortune for helping them, she would likely join with them in enacting such schemes.
Her villainy does have anti-villain characteristics due to her softer side (protective love for plants & enviroment, sympathy for few types of defenseless humans, emotional attachment to certain individuals) & her having a main noble goal (protecting the planet) but the noble goal ultimately serves her own selfish desire of being the ruler of the world where humanity and animal kind would be depopulated and enslaved by her & her plants, the world where her twisted ways of dominating men would not be opposed.
Whenever she kills a high profile corporate man, its not purely because she wants to protect the environment and the plant-life she loves but also because her gaining twisted pleasure from making men that are stronger or have more power than her to want her, putting them under her complete control to do her bidding and once they are out of their usefulness to her, she would give them her kiss that they want from her but with her deadly toxin of contempt. Its a kill for both the right and wrong reasons. The kill is motivated by both the soft and cruel side of her character, which i find to be interesting.
But she does have a softer side that prevents her from crossing certain lines of her own (like not being able to put Harley - the person Ivy cares under her mind control). The struggle of plant side vs human side in Ivy is the struggle between her wanting her plant kingdom to dominate vs her wanting to be protective of the few humans she cares about & few types of defenseless humans she sympathizes with. Her main goal isn't taking down heroes like how Lex is obsessed with taking down Superman because making heroes her main enemies that she should devote all her efforts to take down would make them a greater hindrance to her plan. However she is more on a side of a villain than a hero since heroes would not even let her kill any people not even the rich & powerful (ceos, politicians, etc...) who are most responsible for polluting and destroying the environment and villains are the ones who kill humans, which in someway further her cause of protecting plant-life. Ivy sees the problem but she is morally corrupted and has a twisted vision for her ideal world that would cost massive loss of lives & free will of humans.
To make it more simple to understand the morality of a character, i would say a pure villain is someone who kills innocent people indiscriminately, an anti villain is someone who kills alot of innocent people but is more selective with theirs killings, an anti hero is someone can kill some innocent people if they are forced to or deem necessary in order to take down a bad guy, a hero never choose to kill an innocent people. Ivy's most interesting characterization is when she is potrayed to be more like an anti villain or a villain with some anti villain characteristics. Comics are filled with pure villains, heroes and anti hero but anti villain doesnt have many stand out characters and is often misunderstood to be anti hero. Anti villains are on the side of evil but not completely self serving.
The easy way to describe Ivy is that she turns quite murderous to a crowd of humans in her sight (humans are like pests to her. She cant stand seeing too many of them) & kills people that enter her plant territority, victimizes men as her morning routine, at night time going out to commit eco terrorism & kill people that commit "crime against nature" while they are in her sight (minor crime like driving car, stepping on grass, building skyscrapers that block sunlight to major crime like mass polution), at certain seasonal times wants to depopulate crowded, polluted urban areas. In short, Ivy kills people for harming plants or ruining her view, which makes her more cruel than Batman who fights against but does not kill criminals for harming people. She has a brand of enviromental justice driven by her own anger but without humanity.
In GCS trio dynamics, I've always viewed Ivy as someone who's more evil than Catwoman due to Ivy having been twisted by her past trauma & the pain of the planet that she can feel but most of the crimes Ivy has committed are not as self serving as Catwoman's. Even in comparison with Harley Quinn who is more psychotic & was willing to commit crimes just to please Mr Jay, you can also see most of Ivy's crimes do have a purpose that is not as self serving as Harley's. Harley would want to cause multiple explosions in a random area without caring about the loss of human lives & the property destruction caused by the explosions because the explosions look fun to her but Ivy would want to cause multiple explosions in a specific area because she wants to destroy the buildings in the area and get rid of the people in the area. Ivy is not as self serving as Harley and Catwoman, Ivy is not as psychotic as Harley but Ivy is more evil in her thoughts than Harley and Catwoman in their thoughts. And its no suprise that Catwoman is richer than Ivy due to Catwoman keeping what she steals while Ivy using her money to buy fertilizers and giving money to enviromental groups. Still Ivy is morally corrupted and has a kill count that is probably the highest among the GCS (many victims from factories, oil rigs, corporation headquaters, skyscrapers that block sunlight & urban areas, military bases, etc.... ). Ivy is a victim of her past trauma & her present pain, started killing men out of vengeance, out a sense of revenge and started committing crimes for the purpose of protecting the plant-life, believing the extreme methods to be the most effective solutions, then became more corrupted, developed her own manipulating & killing preference and her favorite killing methods, became willing enough to commit crimes just for her twisted pleasure of dominating men & killing people that fit her killing perference, but still capable of feeling compassionate for those are perceived by her to be so defenseless, so helpless and has emotional attachment to some individuals. She is one of the most real-life villain you could get in Batman. Part of her is noble & compassionate - being the protective figure to the plants & few humans she cares about and even to few types of defenseless humans and other part is just twisted & mentally disturbing if you think about it. Seeing her being able to show compassion to few types of defenseless humans and a few humans that are close to her is what makes you realize how twisted she is. You can understand why she becomes so twisted. She isn't too twisted to be incomprehensible. Ivy is a sympathetic character not because she has redeeming qualities for being a villain but because she is a twisted person whose twistedness could be understood and therefore make us feel more sympathetic to her. We understand where those twistedness come from, what caused those twistedness. We understand what drove her to manipulate & kill people at first, what has molded her into the kind of manipulator & killer she is, why she has developed a killing preference and chooses painful killing methods. From her new 52 origins, she was a child who suffered abuse from her controlling father. Then with the post crisis backstory, she was seduced and poisoned by a man. Then there was another story where she lost her plant paradise to mercenary men. These tragedies propel her to become a manipulative and violent individual. Ivy went from being a victim to being a victimizer. Ivy sees people for how useful they can be to her or how fitting they are (especially men) as her victims. Just look at how she poisoned the BoP to make them work for her and killed a man that traveled along with the BoP. Is Ivy incapable of caring for a human? No. Ivy can be very protective to the thing or the people she cares about. But the nature of Batman world is that it is full of broken people. People that can never let go of their traumatic past just like how Bruce can never let go of the night where he was victimized by a criminal. There is always that brokeness in the character Ivy that should make her not be able to have totally healthy relationships with others. In Gotham Knights, the orphan kids that she took in during NML ended up poisoned by her. Ivy unconciously poisoned the kids that she took care of. Harley and Ivy are depicted to be in a totally healthy relationship due to DC wanting to cater to the fanbase of a popular ship and propping up Harley, not because of how compatible of Ivy as character is to Harley. But this doesnt mean that they can not be written as an interesting duo where Harley can be the voice of morals & empathy to Ivy and Ivy can be the voice of logic & knowledge to Harley.
Some people say that Ivy is reactionarily cruel and kill people even when they only cause an extremely minor provocation and that's true for her in certain circumstances like killing people who came to the park she'd claimed as her territory or killing those that drives a car or stomping on grass in front of her and to her they are all justifiable evil to protect her plant-life / enviroment from any potential threat and for the twisted pleasure from the painful killings as well. In the bigger picture, her reactionary cruelty to humans that come to her plant area / that harm plant-life in her presence is just a small backlash against humans after a long period of history where humanity is already used to exploiting plant-life without receiving any backlash and such cruelty is not even enough to deter most other humans from exploiting or destroying the same plant area / the plant-life that she wants to preserve. Her misanthropy doesn't make her go out of her way to kill everyone she meets or in her sight but rather stay as a complete isolationist in her own garden and kill most people that dare to enter her garden (but not children) and kill those who gather into a large crowd within her sight. Only when she is in rage mode that she would kill everyone in her sight and only at certain seasonal times when she is at her most angry, cynical self she would then go for genocidal schemes.
Despite being a sadistic killer with a killing preference and being a reactionary killer to the humans that pollute or harm plants in her presence or gather in large number in her sight, she also kills anyone who stands in her way or sides with those that she wants to kill. Her mood can be changed quickly (going from being at peace to being enraged) due to her sensing an abrupt mass destruction of a nearby forest or an abrupt mass polution of a nearby soil. Her mood is effected by the healthiness of the enviroment that she is in (she would be at peace in forest but not in polluted places). The killings of her character are sometimes more driven by her rage caused by enviromental triggers or social triggers than by reasons. She is someone who could tear down buildings just because she feels so enraged for finding out that she has been manipulated by someone. If the abrupt destruction of plants/nature in her surroundings were too much for her to bear, such abrupt destruction could make her emotionally snapped enough to just want to destroy things & kill everyone on her sight and would only stop when she feels satisfied enough with the destrution of materials and the kill(s) she gets. Not only her moods can be changed due to the condition of her surroundings, she also suffers from S.A.D seasonal affective disorder. Due to S.A.D, there are months where she would be more villainous up to the point of wanting to commit genocide as a way to cope with her more cycnical, more enraged self during a year and there are months where she just hibernates, wants to be left alone with her plants or in a forest. At her most cycnical, enraged self during a year, she is someone who could take over city or sometimes attempt to wipe out a population but at other times she is also a mother who would take in every single orphan child into her garden of Eve or help healing women & children that were abused or wounded. Thats what makes Ivy such an interestingly twisted character. Cruel yet compassionate. If a villain is portrayed to always be murdering everyone in comics, it would make that villain a generic one. Seeing a villain being able to murder everyone when she is at her most cycnial, most enraged self during a year or in a provoked state but also able to help the few types of humans that she sympathizes with when she is in a non provoked state, its just so fascinating. Its also why Batman often tries to talk/calm her down when he wants to stop her because a provoked Ivy is more dangerous than a non provoked one. Comics villain like Carnage is depicted as a serial killer that enjoys killing everyone on his path but i find Ivy is truly a more disturbing individual because she acts more like a real-life serial killer that has a killing preference and this killing preference is the disturbing reason for why real-life serial killers do not kill everyone on their sight.
People often say she is the kind of character that could cooperate with Ra's due their similar goal, Ivy is actually someone whose soft side has shown to be compassionate to certain types of humans that suffer from abuse or in need of healing and her dark side is a woman who enjoys dominating men in her twisted ways and sadistic killer to nature offenders (being a genocidal maniac is no fun for her since she is someone who dishes out punishment to plant killing individuals and destroys their facilities) while Ra's is a man with power and wants to rule the world so it doesn't fit in her character to work with Ra's in the long term to depopulate the earth population to a useful amount that would benefit his rule the most. The humans that are useful to Ivy (people with knowledge on plant-life & care about it) are not useful enough for Ra's. Despite having similar goals, both have ultimately different visions for their ideal world and Ivy's extreme methods are arguably less extreme than Ra's extreme methods. Ivy is the lesser evil of the two. Ivy is more evil thanCatwoman & The Punisher but less evil than Ra's. If you can see how the one trauma of loss pushes the Punisher to racks up a high kill count then you can imagine Ivy - a person who feel the loss of her plant children everyday - would be more cruel than the Punisher. If you see Punisher as the result of one bad day then Ivy should be potrayed as a result of everyday being a bad day - a person who can never leave the never ending cycle of pain & avenge. The concepts of her character are a "domineering" seductress who harvests men to make them into plant food & fertilizers or sex objects or test subjects or things that fulfill her simple needs (her to-do list before coming up with a eco terrorism scheme or in her down time after having carried out the eco terrorism scheme)and a "terrorizing" eco extremist who targets people & facilities for harming plant or producing smoke(her usual eco terrorism schemes). From her perspective, she is just a woman who enjoys "dominating men" and "punishing offenders against nature" and does not see herself as a villain for doing those things. The twisted version of playboy Bruce Wayne at day + anti-crime avenger Batman at night. To those who write Ivy as a criminal who only robs people & kill only those who intend to harm her its not Ivy but Catwoman. To those who potray Ivy as an assassin who kill a room full of politicians, CEOs & soldiers but does not have the misanthropy that makes her get agitated by a large crowd of humans within her sight and pushes her to live as a complete isolationist & kill humans who intrude her garden, never harvests male strangers to make them fulfill her simple needs (like luring and turning them into plant food & fertilizer or test subjects for her hybridization or poison experiments or sex objects to satisfy her libido for one night), never targets car drivers/grass stompers in her eco terrorism schemes, its the Punisher but not Ivy. Also if you potray Ivy as someone who is committing mass genocide on a consistent basis instead of only at certain seasonal times, it would be Ra's but not Ivy. The worst thing that she had sucessfully done is enslaving the majority of humanity. From my understanding of the character, Ivy would only work with Ra's when the circumstance requires her to do so or for a good payoff in working with Ra's in the short term. Both Ivy and Ra's are ambitious about saving the planet but Ra's has much less empathy and is more driven to commit mass genocides on a consistent basis. Ivy has a sense of empathy for few types of humans and emotional attachment to individuals and doesnt always feel feel enraged & cynical enough to commit genocides on a consistent basis. Even though she has this inner struggle between her plant side vs her human side, losing her humanity is the same as losing the love from her mother when she was a child. The experience of losing her mother to her abusive father is the reason why she has soft spots for few types of people (victimized women, defenseless children that are in need of healing or suffer abuse from men) and is the one reason she is afraid of being emotionally hurt by people whom she has her emotional attachment with (besides the traumatic experience she had with the men close to her in her life being the other reason). The fear of being emotionally hurt by people whom she has emotional attachment with was greatly expanded on the HQ TV series to explain why she feels more comfortable being an isolationist in a society but at the same time her compassionate side makes her feel compelled to help few types of people (like those close to her or women & children who suffer from abusement or are hurt, etc...).
I like Ivy because she is a thought provoking character and when i analyze the humanity of her character is also when i see the bad aspects of humanity itself. We can see the humanity of her character as she struggles against humanity for nature and feels conflict with the humanity within herself. Swamp Thing doesn't fit into human society but Swamp Thing holds onto his humanity dearly because its that humanity inside Swamp Thing that gives him a living purpose while Ivy lives in a human society but she struggles between her plant & human side because picking one side over the other would mean losing a part of her. Swamp Thing is a non interventionist while Ivy is an extremist. To her and to us humans, is humanity above nature? The conflict between her and Batman is not simply a villain vs a hero or a criminal vs a crime fighter but also of a eco-terrorist vs a law enforcer (or an eco crusader vs a caped crusader), a anarchist vs a corporatist, heading to the sunlight vs blending into the shadows, wilderness vs urban civilization, rich & wild nature vs corporate wealth & modern warfare technology, obsession with returning the planet to its "natural order" vs obsession with preserving "social order", killing preference vs no kill code, a crusader for environmental justice vs a crusader for lawful justice, enviromentalism taken to the extreme without much regards to human lives vs vigilatism limited with no kill code, a crusader who would kill and enslave everyone to protect the thing she loves vs a crusader who would sacrifice the thing he loves to protect everyone, a fun & seductive villainess vs dark & brooding hero. Both are twisted by their past traumas and driven by vengeance due to feeling the pain of losing the ones or the things they love but the female crusader becomes corrupted by her cause while the male crusader stays true to his principle. For a fictional character, she is a humanely feminine character. Being seductive, emotionally sensitive, protective of those under one's care, compassionate towards those in need of healing, etc... are simply well known characteristics of a feminine character. She wants the plant children she loves to win against those that bully them. Her love for plants is not only simply due to her gardening hobby but also because they are also the reminder of her good childhood memories with the person that loved her the most - her mother. But unlike her mother who failed to protect herself and her child, Ivy is a mother that would protect her plant children at any cost against humans and especially against men. She won't let humans exploit her beloved plants just like how her father abused her mother & her without any strong backlash from her mother & her. Her character shows a darker & crazier side of feminism in being overprotective of the things she loves - defenseless plants and in her hatred for men who are representative of dominating masculinity. Her feminism ranges from being a seductive woman who manipulates men and then gives them sexual pleasure they want from her with her deadly kiss of contempt to being a woman who takes in human children in need of a mother figure or in need healing and goes at extreme length to protect her plant children. The concept of her character seems to a combination of Feminism & Environmentalism at an extreme level. She seems to be an anarchist (anti corporate, anti political class, anti military, anti laws enforcement) with environmental agenda & anti Darwinian ideals making her feel compelled to protect most defenseless living beings (plants & living beings that are weaker than & abused by the nature destructive or abusive humans) and kill the strongest living beings (nature destroying humans with men being the most hated group). Her level of sympathy is probably in this order: plants > children & pets > victimized women > farmer and enviromentalist >>> stranger women or stranger men in urban cities > men possessing weapons (cops, soldiers, bodyguards) & people that stand in her way (heroes) > abusive humans & humans who commit ecocide like men possessing power & wealth (politicians, CEO). At one time, Ivy killed the cops that entered the park because she felt compelled to protect the park from being taken over & prevent the orphans under her care from being taken away by the cops. Her killing method for the cops is quite brutal but as she buried them with her vines, you could feel that she was doing everything she could to protect her new found garden of Eve. Famous comics book villains believe in Darwinian ideals that the strongest men should rule yet this woman here believes in anti Darwinian ideals that the most defenesless life-form on the planet should be the ones to take over the planet, which makes her such a fascinating character. If a character like Ivy had been put in stone age or any timeline where plant-life flourishes on earth or even in an apocalyptic world where most of humanity was already wiped out, she could have been a hero to everyone but tragically the character lives in modern time settings where humanity dominates & exploits everything. The right person but at the wrong time.
I think eventually in the near future DC will make her more of a less murderous anti heroine character that is trying to reform & fit into society to give her more exposure to the public and her fans. Making a character more likeable is a way of attracting a wider audience and more fans for her character. To think that her character doesnt have enough depth to be developed into her own character and must stay as a villain against Batman for eternity, i dont see that to be true. BTAS Ivy is potrayed as a plant crazy lady. She just wants to turn everything into plants while comics Ivy has more nuances and the philosophy of dominating the domineering and sympathizing with the defenseless. If you run around with a gun, Ivy is gonna kill you but you are down, hurt and being attacked by others, Ivy would feel compelled to protect you since she sees that you are defenseless. She is also an elemental character, has the connection to the Green and that alone opens up a lot narrative driven stories for her which are beyond Gotham. Crossing into Swamp Thing's Plantworld & exploring Gotham Underworld at the same time is an interesting concept. Ivy has more than enough depth to be pushed as an independent character. For developing stories where PI is an independent character, there is an interesting idea of building up of the feud between the abused turned abuser Isley vs her pre-52 past abuser Jason Woodrue, a fight between grey vs dark / lesser evil vs greater evil, which could make Ivy look more heroic.
https://imgur.com/a/diW6ZG2
However at this time, it still makes sense to push her more to be written as a mainstream credible supervillainess because her character is already popular, has a compelling motivation and is versatile with her plant manipulation power. How many female villains (or former female villains) that could be well written, are popular and have versatile powers? Enchantress & Circe (magic), Emma Frost (telepathy), Mystique (shape-shifting). Not many female villains could be written to be as well defined & compelling as Ivy. The most important reasoning for pushing her more as a villain as of right now is that her character is the contrast, corrupted version of the hero Batman. Harley is already pushed to be more of a pure anti heroine so it makes more sense for Ivy to be portrayed as credible supervillainess that that wants to reclaim everything that has historically belonged to nature but has been taken away & destroyed by humanity or has suffered under a long period of domination from humanity, that succumbs to her dark impulse of dominating men in her twisted ways, that commit crimes seemingly unrelated to environmental agenda but still further her cause in the long run like accumulating wealth, that works on her own or with other villains to take down the heroes. With Ivy being pushed as a villain, she should be written to have greater role in significant stories and has more appearances as the main villain. She is such a good contrast to Batman yet writers don't seem to know how to make good stories for the conflict between her & Batman, her twisted kind of evil vs his goodness. There are tons of potential good stories for her as a villain against Batman. And Swamp Thing doesn't care about human's morals so it shouldn't matter if she is portrayed as a supervillain against heroes & humans and still be able to contact and connect with him on certain levels. Swamp Thing could just be apathetic to the crimes she commits against humans or disagree with her methods but still work with her on many occasions for a common cause of protecting the Green. I'd like to think that the Green uses Swamp Thing as its main protector but has Ivy as a nuclear option against humanity. But Ivy is not a champion for the Green like Swamp Thing is. The Green only amps up Ivy in certain occasions because it sees her as a weapon.
And come to think of it, Ivy is the sort of character that could be written as being either a "less murderous trying to fit into society" antihero or a "mixture of a sadistic villain routinely killing male strangers for her own twisted pleasures & reactionarily killing crowd of humans within her sight and an anti villain killing grass stompers, car drivers & committing eco terrorism to save the planet". Her dark side & light side are well defined. If you want to characterize her as an antihero, she would be someone who tries to fit in society, has dark impulses, helps few people that are close to her or certain types of humans (like those that are abused / hurt or in need of help) but still commits petty crimes for her own selfish needs and tries at her best to selectively kills the persons who are most guilty of destroying the enviroment and kill with the least unnecessary side casualties as she possibly can. But if you want to characterize her as a villain, she could collaberate with other villains, help them carry out their criminal schemes if they offer her good fortune. Her routine men killings & her eco terrorism acts would then be not only for the noble goal of saving the planet but also for her own twisted pleasures of dominating men and ultimately for her own selfish desire of remaking the world into a place where humanity and animal kind are depopulated and enslaved by her and her plants. She is not a pure evil but more of a twistedly evil character. She is more of a real-life villain than a comics villain. You could have her portrayed as either "a mixture of a sadistic villain and a compelling anti villain "or an "anti hero struggling against her own dark impulses" and they all work.
When a story is written from a hero's perspective, you see the villains as monsters that need to be put down but when a story is written from a villain's perspective, you see the villain being someone who perceives things with their own sense of justice (even though its an twisted, unconventional one) and is not a complete heartless monster that people think they are, who has their own sense of morality which makes them choose to kill less people or certain types of people while they are carrying out their criminal schemes and has certain lines that they do not want to cross, who sometimes resists their dark impulses (rage, contempt & other dark thoughts),
who have their own ways to achieve their noble goal that ultimately satisfy their selfish desire and wants (environmentalism, relationships with others).
A non enraged Ivy doesn't kill wounded people or completely defenseless humans (whether its for the right reason of sympathy or for the more disturbing reason of not finding pleasure in such kills). She could kill a man without a reason, the only thing that matters is which male victims she finds the most pleasure in killing. She often goes to clubs/bars to satisfy her men killing preference.
She would not kill a random woman without reason and her killings of women usually have reasons/motives (not good reasons/motives but still at least have reasons/motives) or under more specific circumstances than her killings of men. She would not kill children for sadistic pleasure and be friendly to them (except the likes crime fighter like Robin) but they could still end up as casualties in her eco terrorism/criminal schemes.
She could sometimes kill a woman purely for Ivy's sadistic pleasure. She could kill a child when she is enraged or as a side casualty in her eco terrorist/criminal scheme. I see writing her as a pure evil sadistic villain is an easy thing but not the right thing to do because she is such a well defined character not only whose dark side but whose light side could be understood so well. Even the word "villain" is too simple to describe her character. She is not just a good "villain" but also a good character. She is not a pure evil villain - a heartless monster who has no sympathy for anyone. You could see what has driven her to become a killer. You could see who & what actions could make her pull the kill trigger. You know which types of humans she sympathizes with and which she doesn't. If you have an enraged Ivy going against Batman and somehow chooses to prioritize of attacking a child over Batman, you are doing Ivy wrong because her hatred of a small defenseless child is not greater than the her hatred of those stand in her way & just literally killed her plants. She was cutting down trees to end Batman but then somehow ignored the guy to attack others? There is no problem with an enraged Ivy that would go on to kill everyone on her sight including children & bust down buildings on her path but having her prioritizing to attack a stranger child over someone who just killed her plants is not what i see is a good portrayal of her character. That's not mentioning her origin story where her mother & her child self suffered abuse from her father and ... her mother murdered by her father, making her have soft spot for certain types of humans, especially abused children. Unless Ivy is enraged, potraying her being an intentional abuser of children like her father makes no sense. Ivy is generally friendly to children, but not protective of all types of children. Also if Ivy is gonna want to her foes to be buried, she is gonna bury them with vines and would not let others do the burying. You could easily write a story where she appears as a sadistic killer to adult humans and yet its just one part of Ivy's character and not the whole of it. Ivy would consider plucking a rose as murder and is written to overreact over the death of a rose for comedic effect because something as small & delicate as a rose is like a baby to her and deserves to be treated better. There is nothing that would make her blush more than hearing a compliment on her garden & plant children, not her beauty. Ivy is a multi dimensional character who has selfish desires & a main noble goal where her noble goal ultimately serves her selfish desires.
To me, Ivy's most memorable stories are not where she appears just as a sadistic villain against Batman but rather as a character with her own depth that comes in conflict with Batman. Her most memorable stories are where she was given more depth (like having soft spot for certain types of humans). The conflict between her and Batman is more interesting and an idealogical one when Ivy is not potrayed as a plant crazy villain that needs to be put down but rather more like an enviromentalist that goes at extreme length to protect plant-life while Batman is a law enforcer that doesnt want innocents to die. The enviromentalism aspect is supposed to make Ivy more of a sympathetic character but her enviromentalism is taken to the extreme without much regards to the lives and free will of humanity & animal kind. If people ask me whether she should be written as a villain, i'd say she should be written as a character with her own kind of dark impulses, capable of showing softer side to a few types of humans, having the noble goal of protecting the planet but achieving it by comittting eco terrorism on consistent basis, causing depopulation of urban places at certain seasonal times & eventually enslaving those that were spared by her due to her having sympathy for defenseless, helpless humans or her valuing humans who care about plant-life and have knowledge on it. Ivy is a much more interesting character when she is not portrayed as a pure evil & crazy villain and in someways that makes her a more humanely dark & truly disturbing character. Its not her being irredeemably evil, its her being twistedly evil that makes her character so fascinating. Its her having some sort of killing & sparing list and not being some mindless monster killing everyone on her path that makes her a truly disturbing character.
She is one of the very few characters that could make Bruce Wayne look like a bad guy. Wow, a villain who actually does thing in unlawful ways and still be able to make one of the most heroic guy in fiction look bad? How twisted is that? Yes, Ivy is multidimensional. Her eco agenda isnt comepletely wrong even though she has a twisted vision for her ideal world. Being a sadistic villain in a story is just one dimension of her character.Her empathy makes her not taking pleasure in killing orphans or abused / wounded women & children but feeling compelled to protect them. She can be a collaberator with other villains in short term but she wants to be a conqueror in the long term. She is a serial killing seductress & terrorizing eco extremist, a reactionary killer to those that pollute / do harm to plants in her presence or gather into a crowd in her sight or rage driven mass killer due to witnessing abrupt mass destruction of plant life or at certain seasonal times a villain who wants to commit genocide on urban population. She is one of the few characters that challenge his belief in law & order, making him question himself whether him being an enforcer of laws & order would always be the right thing to do. Does the law protect the innocents or the top coporate rich men? Should he believe in laws that are made to protect those that create them in first place? Batman could be a bad guy in certain scenarios due to his conviction in maintaining law & order forcing him to indirectly protect the top polluters & the corrupted political system. But this would also make Batman a more heroic character as his justice isn't driven only by revenge against crime (unlike Ivy killing people just for harming plants) but also for protecting the lives of innocent people & lawful punishment against evil doers. Batman could be heroic to a fault by having faith in laws & order, putting evil doers in prisons and asylums to be treated instead of letting them be killed unlawfully by others. Her extreme brand of environmentalism also makes us see Batman as a more humanely flawed hero. Even though Batman is the perfect hero, it does not make Bruce Wayne the perfect rich guy. The duality of Batman & Bruce Wayne is the interesting part of his character and Ivy comes into direct conflict with both sides of his character. He is among the wealthiest people, which means he is realistically among the top polluters and most political influential people and is one of her targets. Most villains challenge the Batman aspect of the guy but Ivy is someone who can challenge the Bruce Wayne aspect of the guy. Ivy forces Batman to use his Bruce Wayne persona more than other villains. Ivy forces Batman to improve his Bruce Wayne image. Pamela Isley is a seductive woman & passionate but also extreme environmentalist vs Bruce Wayne being a billionaire playboy & a head of a corporation. Poison Ivy being a criminal codename for an eco terrorist vs Batman being alter ego for a law enforcer. Her two identities (Pamela Isley and Poison Ivy) are 'poison' to Bruce, just like how his secret identity is poisonous to any love interest. Bruce wants Pamela to not be Poison Ivy anymore while Poison Ivy is somewhat obsessed with Batman & wanted to know whether Batman was Bruce. Bruce cant simply be Batman and have a fulfilling love life at the same time due to Batman being a secret identity that should not be risked to be exposed to the public, his strong devotion to crime fighting & instilling fear onto criminals, the possibility of having those close to him being targeted by a growing number of his enemies - enemies of Batman. Being Batman is a sacrifice of personal happiness. Batman is the most feared figure to criminals in Gotham because he sacrificed a part of his humanity to instill fear onto criminals. Batman is a personification of pain & sacrifice. Batman suffers from the trauma of losing loved ones and therefore he doesnt want to see those close to him to go down because of him nor want them to suffer from the same trauma that he suffers from if he goes down. Should he let those who are close to him become more involved into his crime fighting life? This is why Batman struggles between his love life and crime fighting life. To Batman, crime fighting is not just a career but a life. He just cant allow those close to him to go down because of him nor let them suffer from losing him. Even though Bruce is a more of a loner that can never show his pain, his vulnerability to most other people but when Dick lost his parents, Bruce sees the pain Dick was suffering from and therefore took him in and heal him from his suffering. But Bruce cant allow himself to have so many people become close to him. A soldier does not go to the frontline and brings his family with him. As a result, Dick Grayson becomes one of the few people that are allowed to be in Bruce's inner circle and the most experienced Robin - having the knowledge of how Batman does his job and a backstory that makes him an equal to Batman in many fields (detective, h2h figthter, etc...). Dick is one of the very few persons to understand what it means to be Batman. Those that truly understand what Batman truly is would not want to be Batman. And its the main reason why Bruce would trust Dick the most to be a good Batman. Batman is a symbol that is greater than Bruce Wayne himself. Batman is a figure that strikes from the shadow and instills fear onto criminals. Batman is pain & sacrifice. Batman is everlasting. The fact that Batman being a mantle would show how great of a symbol Batman is.
There are so many contrasts that the character Ivy represents: killing for pure sadism vs killing for sadism & a sympathetic cause, passionate about protecting plant-life yet does damaging things to materials & people, has no problem with killing men but wants the heroic Batman to want her, cruel to most humans yet compassionate to those that are most defenseless or in need of healing. The most interesting contrast of her character "cruel yet compassionate" is also well portrayed in Arkham games where Ivy doesn't care how many humans have to die for the most defenseless living beings - plants to flourish, for her to impose her brand of natural order on Gotham because to her, the arrogant humans deserve such punishment from nature, punishment from the most defenseless living beings - plants but when Gotham was covered in fear toxin, she felt compelled to save people because she didn't want to see her plants to be killed by chemicals nor want to see the more defenseless women & children to be traumatized by the more domineering man. Ivy has always been about being the protector for the defenseless living beings that suffer from abuse or are in need of healing. Plants are the most defenseless living beings that suffer the most from exploitation by all humans - the most domineering living beings on planet, which drives her to be a protector for plants more than any human. Her ambition of being a protector for the defenseless plants, her wanting the plants she cares about to win against the humanity that dominates them makes her cross the line to commit cruel acts against humans (including enslaving & killing humans). But when she saw that the more defenseless women & children in Gotham were being traumatized by the more domineering man, she sacrificed her life to save Gotham. Her compassion for the more defenseless women & children made her feel compelled to save all of Gothamites from being traumatized by the more domineering man. This kind of compassion comes from her childhood experience of her child self having been abused by & losing her mother to her abusive father, the image of both a child & a woman suffering from abuse by a domineering man. Its this image in her mind that overrides the image of her plants suffering from exploitation by humans and makes her do more heroic acts towards the more defenseless women & children. She wants her defenseless plants to win against humanity that dominates them but there is always gonna be that humanity within her that makes her feel compelled to protect the more defenseless women & children from being abused by the more domineering men or are in need of healing.
All the contrasts i mentioned above exist because she was supposed to be written as one of Batman's femme fatale whose character is in direct conflict with his character and in someway a twisted/contrast version of him. She was supposed to be just one of those female rouges that tempt Batman to go over the dark side but later on got developed more into a character with her own depth. The beauty of Batman's rouges is that they are him but twisted in someways and she is the most interesting twisted version of him. If Batman believes in stopping all crimes by any mean necessary then he would become like Ivy who believes in stopping all crimes against nature by humanity by any mean neccessary. She represents many of his selfish desires without morals restraint. With Riddler its intellectual superiority, Bane - strength superiority, Penguin - wealth superiority but with Ivy, she is a darker psyche of Batman. If Riddler shows what Batman could be if he doesn't use his detective skill for the good of people then Ivy shows what Batman could be if he fights against crime without any principle. She is the more cruel, selfish & fascist version of him. She kills individuals for comitting crimes against nature like harming plants or driving cars (and possibly even go after the relatives/friends of those individuals), sabotage facilities, manipulate others into doing her bidding. Her cruelty in terms delivering punishment of painful death to individuals, selfishness in terms of protecting the only thing she cares about, her extremism in terms of willing to kill everyone that stands in her way or harms just a little of plant-life / pollute in her presence, killing people who aren't necessarily directly responsible for mass destruction of plants along with those who are directly responsible for such destruction & willing to sacrifice her own life for a cause - protecting plant-life even if its just only for a plant, having a twisted sense of enviromental justice deeming most humans no matter of how little they harm plant-life are worthy of punishment from her and viewing that Gotham needs to be "purified" by nature. Also at certain seasonal times, she would carry out genocidal schemes against an urban populace. In contrast, Bruce is merciful in punishing criminals by knocking them out & sending them to jail, noble in protecting everyone's lives, having a moderate sense of lawful justice deeming all humans no matter of how much they violated the laws are still worthy of forgiveness from him once they rehabilitate and viewing that Gotham needs "hope" inspired by him. She is not in physical battle against him, she is in ideological battle against him. A more selfish ideology vs a more noble one. Her twisted sense of environmental justice vs his moderate sense of lawful justice. A crusader who would kill and enslave everyone to protect the thing she loves vs a crusader who would sacrifice the thing he loves to protect everyone. A crusader who kills for the smallest offense against nature vs a crusader who keeps trying to rehabilitate the biggest offenders against justice. Batman is driven by vengeance to become a protector of human lives while she is driven by vengeance to become a killer of human lives. They are both fighting for their own cause but he has principles and does things in the right way while she acts on dark impulses and does in things in the wrong way and ultimately for her own selfish desire of dominating over humanity and animal kind. No matter what kind of schemes she carry out or what kind of humans she targets, she is ultimately a law breaker and a killer of human lives while Batman is ultimately a law enforcer and a protector human lives. Even if you don't make her evil and kill men for sadistic pleasures, she would still be an antagonist to Batman because the conflict between Batman and her isn't just good vs evil but also ideological. If Joker is an ideological opponent to Batman since Joker stands for crime & chaos vs Batman who stands for law & order then Ivy is also an ideological opponent to Batman since she stands for environmental justice & natural order vs Batman who stands for lawful justice & social order. She and Batman are surprisingly alike as it was said by Poison Ivy in Batman TAS, which somehow makes me see them not as 2 entirely different characters. She is him in everything he is afraid of becoming - him becoming a unforgiving, anti social & hateful monster of vengeance like her. Not like Batman, she is a crusasder who wants to avenge for her plant children not by the laws of mankind. She shows him what a monster he could be if he let his traumas & his idea of avenging the death of his parents consume him without him caring about the lives, freewill of and trust from Gotham people. And when she carry outs town/city takeover scheme, she shows him what a monster he could be if he takes his method of crime fighting to the extreme of killing and enslaving all criminals & imposing social order. Ivy could also be a good WW villain because she shows what WW could be if she wants to turn the world of mankind into her own Themyscira. Ivy could also be an interesting Swamp Thing's foe as she is someone who struggles between her plant side and her human side vs ST who holds onto his humanity. Ivy could be written as a foe against Superman as well due to her only seeing the worst in humans and representing enviromentalism vs Supes inspiring others to see the good in people and representing sci-fi technology. A brilliant mind with potential for great good (look at the positive contribition to enviroment by her mutant plants & how Ivy will help heroes to fight against a destructive threat that harms plants) but driven mad by her personal trauma & her feeling the pain of the planet to never be a full hero to humans. Despite all the cruelty & villainy, her character still inspires people 2 things "love" & "compassion". Love for nature and compassion to certain defenseless humans (women & children that suffer from abuse or in need of healing). A person who can kill innocents for sadistic pleasures doesn't mean that person can't recycle, can't help nor save others. Her misanthropy doesn't make her become a mindless killing machine but rather make her isolate herself completely from humans & kill those that enter her garden. Her love for nature is greater than her disdain of humanity. Also her misanthropy does not make her kill everyone that she meets due to her either wanting to use other humans or having soft spot/sympathy for certain types of humans. Even though she hates humanity, humanity will always be within her, which is why she didn't choose to side with an alien plant to conquer earth in GCS comics nor side with Gorilla Grodd in Damage comics. She has been shown to be a person who has different level of hatred and sympathy towards different types of humans and has her own humanity. Her own humanity is her sense of empathy which sees that a few types of humans should be helped and even in her killings, there is a sense of morality that she prioritizes killing the domineering and sparing or even protecting the naive, the vulnerable. She usually finds most pleasure in killing male strangers that fall for her seduction but not a naive goodie two shoes. When it comes to a naive goodie two shoes, she does wonder whether killing him should give her any much pleasure. In CoLD where she refrained from killing a guy who was too nice to her & everyone else. Despite having a corrupted morals, she still has morals.
What makes her stand out as a character to me is that she is a very humane character. She has shown to have different level of hatred & empathy towards different types of humans and how much her connection with certain individuals affect her actions or decision making. We humans hate violent men and love harmless children and value our relationship with acquaintances over strangers. The funny thing about Poison Ivy as a character is that no matter how you want to portray her, she still has this kind of image that make people feel sympathetic to her and even see her as a hero. She represents an image of Feminism + Environmentalism fighting against dominating Masculinity. A villain like her can be seen as even more empowering than other usual female heroes because villains have always been about self empowerment at the cost of others. Its almost like a dark fantasy of female empowerment. Even in her most villainous portrayal, this kind of image that she represents would still appeal to people. We humans are very selfish to other living beings. We humans instead of being sympathetic to her for having this kind of maternalistic love for plant, we use that kind of love that she has for plants to ridicule her character. We humans see that plants don't deserve such kind of love. But why do we ridicule a character that has such deep love for plant & much greater love for nature? Such kind of love should be seen as inspiring & sympathetic instead of a crazy obsession. It should be seen as a redeemable part of her character. Plant is nature in its smallest form. If someone has the capability to love a plant, that person would appreciate the beauty of nature more than anything else. If a character is portrayed in a way to show how crazy she is for valuing a plant over a human, she is becoming more sympathetic because in the bigger picture, plants - a part of nature - are defenseless and exploited by humans and she is willing enough to protect just a plant - a small part of nature - from any harm. In a sense, she is not simply someone suffering from a psychosis but also a protector of something defenseless against their human exploiter. She is a protective mother for her abused plant children. Who wouldn't want the thing they love to win against those that dominate it? But there is also a dark side to her character that makes me question myself: if a human goes down the killing path, would there be a day where that human would find satisfaction/pleasure in the killing others and even develop a killing preference? Is the most important reasoning behind Batman's no kill code is that he can never allow himself to find satisfaction in the killing of others? He is the guy who suffers from trauma. Its the pain of losing his parents to a criminal being so great that motivates him to become a crime fighter. He delivers his pain to criminals. Unlike his villains who see themselves as heroes of their own stories, Batman sees himself as a monster. He knows there should be a line for him because if he crosses it, he would become like his rogues. He delivers pain while his rouges deliver painful deaths. He instills the fear of pain onto criminals while his rogues instill the fear of painful deaths onto their potential victims. Once he steps over that line, he will deliver painful deaths to criminals.
Also the story where PI saved a starving village is a non Earth Prime story. I believe it is from DC Comics Bombshells. It isn't cannon because writers don't need to pay attention to the character's background or status in the cannon storyline but it may tell that what kind of direction they are taking with her character.
Interesting scans of past exchanges between Batman & PI
Ideas for writing Ivy:
In the past, Ivy was often written to be just a femme fatale or just a one note villain that wants to sadistically kill all humans in Gotham/the world. With so much depth and popularity, reverting her back to the simplistic villain that her past incarnation used to be would not be satisfying to her fans and a lot other readers anymore. Ivy has greater potential than that. Her character doesn't deserve to be written as the simplistic villain due to the depth she has. Ivy could be written to be more morally complex expressing comics book villains' villainous traits (engaging in petty crimes, being a sadistic killer having a killing preference and favorite painful killing methods = feeding people to plants or delivering the kiss of death, comitting eco terrorism, agitated by a large crowd of humans within her sight, angry at those step on grass or drive cars etc...) but also has anti-villain characteristics (like having soft spot for few types of humans, etc...) and even her self derived heroic traits (like saving people only when there is a threat that harm both plants and humans) but still has her own twisted vision for her ideal world where the planet is protected but at the cost of lives & free will of humanity & animal kind. To me, the best term to describe Ivy is that she is not only a "terrorizing" eco extremist and a "serial killing" seductress but also a "visionary" & "tragic" villain. You should not write her as a pure simplistic villain.
If you potray Ivy as a hero, you basically cut her character in half because the character suddenly doesnt have any dark impulse against those that harm plant-life within her sight and loses the misanthropy that forces her to live like an isolationist. A hero Ivy would basically lose her plant side and the tragedy of her character - the tragedy of being someone who feels the pain of the planet every day and has potential for goodness if they had lived in the stone age or any other era where plant-life flourishes and human population is small. But if you potray Ivy as a pure villain who only appears in stories to kill and manipulate people, the softer part of her character like taking care of plants or caring about some individuals or having soft spots for few types of humans is left out. She is a 3 dimensional character and making her appear in all stories as a pure villain or a pure hero would make her become a 1 dimensional character. With environmental agenda, she could be easily written as "the end justifies the means" character. Ivy doesn't have to be portrayed in all of her stories to be only committing eco terrorism. She could be written to commit crimes seemingly unrelated to her environmental agenda due to her being a long term planner wanting to accumulate more wealth or power (like using large portion of money from bank robberies to give donation to environment activist groups and save small portion of money for herself).
For characterization, writers could still make her a treacherous liar that takes advantage of anyone who trusts her words, a manipulative mind controlling schemer to her pawns, a brutal sadistic killer to all those whom she deems deserving of her punishment and to the law enforcers that want to stop her and an unwilling killer to the innocents that stand in her crusade path but could still be sympathized due to her inner struggle between her plant & human side. The inner struggle between her social isolationist plant side and her compassionate human side does give her character an understandable motivation (delivering extreme punishment to certain men due to deep scar of betrayal & abusement that some men gave to her in the past & her desire to empower the most victimized living beings (plants) against their strongest abusers (men), prevent weaker living beings from being mistreated or taken advantage of their trust by the stronger or the potential abusers (like weaker women vs stronger men), doing things at extreme length to protect plant-life due to her deep love for it & her desire to change the opinion of the masses about plant-life, using any mean at hands to stop humans from destroying the environment due to her total conviction to fight for the plant-life she loves even at the cost of her own personal life & freedom but not to the extent of hurting certain people whom she has soft spot for). PI should be a character that tell people that they are "murderers" not only because of them killing plants she deeply care about but also because of them taking away the living means that plants could provide to every living being. PI could be portrayed in a way to show how far someone would go in the name of love for the nature & care for the well being of other living beings on earth. A backstory for anarchist & terrorist, a response to human society's failure in protecting the environment, the voice of the few trying to stop arms race, wars and the willful ignorance of the masses and the strive for better understanding of gender equality not in just wages but also in relationships. A character that does morally questionable things like committing crimes, killing innocents, law enforcers & soldiers that stand between her and her targets (CEOs, high profile military men, rapists, etc...) but could also be heroic at times (like saving orphans, abandoned animals). A character that feels in conflict with their own self at times when they decide on whether they should go further than their usual moral limits or abandon their strong ties to certain individuals in order to kill their targets and achieve their agenda (in Ivy's case its environmental agenda).
Also I like the idea that not everyone feel all the same when it comes to Ivy, some Amazonians in Themiscyra could feel more sympathetic towards her to the point of not turning her in and the likes of Catwoman would be fine with Ivy killing people as long as it doesn't affect Catwoman while some like Batman would be compelled by their brand of justice to put her in jail or mental asylum. It just shows that even among characters that have relations with heroes, their morals are not the same.
Through comparing Batman with one of his villains, i have to say Batman is a very compelling hero. The nature of Batman world is that it is full of broken people. People that can never let go of their traumatic past just like how Bruce can never let go of the night where he was victimized by a criminal. Batman feels he has to fight against all those criminals (especially those that commit murder) but more importantly he cant let others suffer like he does. The difference between Batman and his villains is how he copes with his own trauma versus how his villains cope with their traumas / mental illnesses. The traumas, mental illnesses that the villains suffer from exacerbate their evil while the trauma that Batman suffers from makes him want to prevent others from suffering like he does. When villains suffer from pain, they cope with it by committing more crimes because the villains find the most enjoyment out of committing crimes than doing other stuffs. However Batman is the opposite of that, Batman is ultimately a healer, not a punisher. Punishing criminals has never been the main drive, its preventing the suffering of others. Underneath the vigilante Batman is the real Bruce Wayne that still suffer from the trauma of loss. People say Batman has dual personas but i would say he has 3 personas. One is the fake playboy billionaire Bruce Wayne, another one is Batman - the symbol and the third one is real Bruce Wayne who shows his vulnerability to those close to him like Alfred, Dick, Clark, etc...
Batman is a man who fights an unwinnable war - the war on crime. But he has to do it because he cant allow others to suffer like he does. He sacrificed his childhood and teenage years to train himself into acheiving peak human's physical conditions. He sacrifices a part of his humanity to instill fear onto criminals and normal relationships with others to be fully devoted to crime fighting. To me, Batman is a personification of pain & sacrifice. Batman is drawn to broken people not because they are as broken as him but because he wants to heal them, he wants them to not be as broken as him. There is that pain in him that makes him hateful towards those that commit crimes (especially those that commit murder). The pain drives him to fight against them but he never let his hatred of them consume him. His hatred of crime should not make a murder of a human or a suffering of another person justified. He knows there is a line he should not cross or he would become like his rogues. He sees himself not as a pure hero but as a monster dwelling within the same madness of his rouges but does not want to drown himself completely in the madness.
People complain about Batman's no kill code but its his no kill code that gives him more depth as a character. No kill code was not intended to be intergral to Batman but later writers add more reasonings to his no kill code. First, the guy believes in rehabilitation. He believes people can change for the better, even the worst kind of people. Secondly, he is the guy who witnessed the murder of his parents so he is not gonna bring himself to kill others without feeling much guilt thinking of himself being like the murderer that shot his parents. Thirdly he is afraid of going down the dark path of killing. He cant allow himself to find satisfaction in the killing of others.
People also often say Batman is a better hero than Superman but i would say that even as a Batman fan, Superman is a hero that inspires other heroes including Batman. The dichotomy between Superman and Batman is interesting because Superman encourages people to see the good within each other and do good to each other (leting go of the darkness within our hearts and forgiving others, trusting others in their capacity for good) while Batman is about preventing people from inflicting pain & suffering onto each other due to the trauma within himself. Superman does not have the hatred for his foes in the same way Batman has hatred for crime. Superman is a hero without darkness while Batman is a monster on the side of the law. Superman is more opstimistic and more open to people, more willing to trust others than Batman. The 2 heroes both have the same goal of protecting people but with different methods. Superman is the sun god with his optimism while Batman is the dark knight defined by his trauma. Superman & Batman are the most popular superheroes and their settings are different from each other but somehow they still end up having such an interesting dichotomy. Superman is about encouraging people to do good while Batman is about preventing people from doing wrong. Superman is full of optimism & openness while Batman is full of pragmatism & cautiousness. Superman wants people to see the best in everything like he does while Batman does not want people to suffer like he does. People often put down Superman to prop up Batman but Batman as a dark knight always needs other characters who is a guardian of the light like Superman. Superman is a hero who represents the optimism that contrasts to the character that is defined by his own trauma like Batman.
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