Detective Comics #23.1

[superfangirl1]

A couple of years later. Ivy in college, where she experiments with early forms of her pheromone powers, making them pills she'd sell on her campus. She gets caught, arrested and was on the verge of expulsion.







Afterwards she scores an internship at Kane Chemicals, a division of Wayne Enterprises. Eventually she gets a meeting with Bruce Wayne himself, by using her pheromone research to grease the wheels and get her in his office, something usually no first year intern could accomplish. She points out this fact and pitches Bruce on using her pheromones as ways to influence people to say buy a product, effectively cutting the need for an advertising department. Obviously, Bruce finds some moral issues in Ivy's pitch.



As she's being forcibly escorted off the property, she attempts to gather her notes and in a struggle, gets doused in all her chemicals.

Comments

[akodo_rokku]

I have to say, the Villain Month issues in general are just *boring*. Murder murder death darkness mayhem blah blah blah. It's like they're almost all drawing from the same map.

[benuben]

Really? What about here? There are only two murders and both of them serve a purpose in the story.

[akodo_rokku]

Here is just adding extra darkness to Ivy's backstory, which she doesn't really *need*. And there *is* her blowing up the Wayne building, which was kind of pointless.

[mrstatham]

I don't know as it adds darkness; In certain versions of her backstory, she does this anyway, from what I recall, and offs her first boyfriend and her parents. In fact, by seemingly removing Jason Woodrue/Floronic Man from the proceedings and apparently having her take on some of her abilities by choice? I think I like this better. Having an abusive father is more of a cliche, certainly, but it's hardly adding extra darkness.

[akodo_rokku]

Oh yeah Flouronic Man doesn't have to be part of her backstory, sure.

I'm not complaining so much about *changes* here, as much as... all of these Forever Evil stories are just boring.

[akodo_rokku]

To be fair, I should be saying "most". Most of them are boring. A couple have been decent, like Gail Simone's Ventriloquist story. Super creepy.

[mrstatham]

Oh, I totally agree. I don't see why they couldn't just give Ivy a story starring her in Batman for a few months or whatever; She's certainly more worthy of a story than Emperor Penguin or the recent Mad Hatter garbage in TDK.

I also understand what they're going for in replacing all the 'hero' books with villains for a month, but it seems weirdly spineless and dull; Why not go the whole hog and have the villains replace the heroes for several months as Forever Evil progresses? It'd be more interesting than a month's worth of origin rehashes which are less effective than the 'heroes and villains' pages they used to do, pre-reboot.

[silicondream]

To be precise, there's only two murders in the flashback parts of the issue. There's also five or six scenes of her killing people in the present day; body count looks to be around 20.

[icon_uk]

It's not just that they are repetitive to me, it's that they're not taking the opportunity of the reboot to actually do anythign NEW with the characters.

[bewareofgeek]

For me, it is less about the murder, and more about the fact that nearly all the ones I've seen have had childhood trauma of one sort or another.

[icon_uk]

Agreed, whilst I appreciate you can use some for the variation on the "One bad day" trope which inspired Batman, I wasn't aware that they all had to be the SAME bad day.

[omgwtflolbbqbye]

I like the part with Bruce flexing his Philanthropist/CEO muscles to shut her down.

But I don't think adding childhood trauma to Pam's backstory is at all necessary or interesting though.

[md84]

Did we really need to see Pamela locking lips with her own father to poison him? Ugh. Yeah, he was a murderous abusive jerk who probably had it coming, but still.

Yes, this backstory is less cluttered than the Flouronic Man one and it gives Pamela more agency, but at least the original backstory didn't have pseudo-incest.

[big_daddy_d]

Initial reaction was "WTF!!" and then "Someone's a little too into Game of Thrones."

[bizarrohulk]

It's hard to tell from the "kiss" panel itself, but from her father's reaction as he's being led away by the guards, I assumed she'd kissed him on the cheek rather than on the lips.

[louisadkins]

It looks that way, to me, as well.

[icon_uk]

Definitely looks like a kiss to the cheek, not the lips. He's rubbing his cheek as he leaves, not wiping his mouth.

[md84]

Ah got it. So it's "just" a case of revenge murder.

[silverzeo]

... wait, how does that work? Poison Ivy has poisonous frog toxin that affect the skin? When she kiss people's lips, it made sense because it was a close why to have them ingest poison without realizing it...

[donnblake]

There are a number of toxins that can take effect through touching the skin. Among them is, y'know, Poison Ivy.

[kamino_neko]

Lips are a better target than the cheek, but it's because the skin is thinner, and it segues into a mucous membrane, both of which make for better absorption, not because she forces her victims to ingest it. (And if she did put poison in people's mouths, it'd probably be absorbed through the mucous membranes, rather than ingested, anyway.) As donnblake mentioned, there are plenty of contact toxins, which will happily be absorbed - albeit more slowly and less completely - through thicker skin.

[thosefew]

So both Freeze and Ivy worked in Wayne Enterprises now? Does the company have a supervillain fast-track program?

[icon_uk]

Robin - "Another fine villain brought to you courtesy of a grant from the Wayne Foundation.... (sees Batman's sidelong glare)... Sorry"

BTAS - "Lock-Up"

[md84]

Kind of makes sense. Wayne Enterprises is the mega-corp of Gotham. They probably employ tons of brilliant people. I guess for every thousand or so sane and perfectly nice people you get the bad eggs like Fries and Isley.

[cainofdreaming]

I'm apparently in the minority, but I liked the connection between the botanic characters of DCU. Woodrue didn't need to be the source of her powers, sure, but having them all be connected through the academic world added to some of the stories. Gaiman's Black Orchid, for one, played on it nicely.

[icon_uk]

I liked the idea, but in this day and age I don't think they all needed to be in the same class at college (as Woodru, Isley, Sylvain and Holland were.. boy, reunions must have been fun for THAT little lot), they could just have been collaborators from around the globe, add a little diversity to the mix.

[louisadkins]

Hmm. Bruce messed up, here. #2cents

Yes, the research she had worked on, to this point, was focused on chemically controlling the mind of a target. Setting aside military applications for such a chemical (honestly, comic book black-box alphabet companies aren't likely to care about an NDA/Proprietary Rights contract clause,) the research she had worked on was an extremely valuable asset that could have easily been leveraged to a much more 'morally-north' use.

Medications today are still very hit or miss, sometimes to the point of trying to drive a finishing nail with a sledgehammer. This research sounds as though it has found one or more methods to exploit the human body to deliver a relatively narrow, maybe even precise, change. Send this research to a psych drug research division! Hell, promote her to "special researcher" and send her to the same division. (This allows for her to be kept somewhere to observe and -possibly- influence toward less amoral decisions, as well.) Hell, Bruce had to have known her background - if he had offered her a chance to address mental issues that hamper people from leaving bad situations (depression, anxiety can do terrible things to your belief that you can escape a bad relationship) she would have likely jumped at the provided offer, even know in that it was likely also being used to keep tabs on her.

#What-If

EDIT: (I should also have mentioned research for helping with treating other mental disorders, as well -the strip suggests the father(?) was possibly a sociopath, for instance.-)

[md84]

Too bad her first suggestion on applications of her research was to mind-control consumers. That probably raised some warning bells for Bruce.

[louisadkins]

I'm sure it did, heh. What sounds better, though. Keeping her somewhere she can be found and kept an eye on, or kicking her out in to the world telling her that her life's work is no longer hers? I don't disagree on his no wanting to use the chemicals to force consumers to buy his products.. I just disagree with his effectively tossing her out when I honestly think she would have been re-form-able, at that point.

[md84]

He probably would have kept an eye on her as Batman later. And honestly, if someone needs to be told that mind control is wrong, and they keep trying to argue their case anyway, he or she is probably not someone you want in your workplace.

[janegray]

Ivy in college, where she experiments with early forms of her pheromone powers, making them pills she'd sell on her campus.

...Ivy sold date-rape pills?

[silverzeo]

Are you surprise after what they did with Freeze... or at least what I heard about him and Nora becoming a couple with a Torgo relationship...

[silverhammerman]

Ugh, what Scott Snyder did to Mister Freeze was an absolute crime. His tragic origin was literally the one thing that elevated Freeze from being a kooky Z-lister to one of Batman's best adversaries, and Snyder squandered all that just so he could have a "dark" twist.

[silverzeo]

Ivy gave her own father a kiss of death... even the Arkham City Ivy would find that too "icky" in her line of work... but then again, "icky" works in stories like these today... to producers or really messed up writers...not to mention it kinda lacking creativity, Ivy kisses a person and kills them... nothing else to it...

How about, like, she brought her father some flowers, like he did with her mother, faked an argument with him so she can throw the flowers into his face, which have been modified to induce an heavy allergic reaction to anyone with a delayed response to have him suffocate in his sleep?

[md84]

TBF, Ivy has been poisoning people/mind controlling people with kisses her entire career, way before Flashpoint.

[jaybee3]

This is basically the plot of Batman Forever replacing the Riddler's backstory with Ivy's. Way for originality there.

And I highly doubt a man who thinks what she wants to do is immoral and unethical his guards instantly remove someone from the premises without packing (why? - does she think she's a threat at that point) then says he'll give her a letter of recommendation. This is just not good storytelling. It comes as so contrived.

[skemono]

This is basically the plot of Batman Forever replacing the Riddler's backstory with Ivy's.

So it's Batman & Robin.

[xamda]

You forgot the first rule of Batman & Robin.
You do not talk about Batman & Robin!

[doodleboy]

Man. Bruce's contracts suck.

[lieut_kettch]

Aaand yet another villain Bruce Wayne is responsible for creating.

[md84]

By all accounts Pamela was already a villain long before she met Bruce. She was already using mind control drugs and poison to get what she wanted. Her encounter with Bruce just set her on the path to becoming a costumed villain.

[blunderbuss]

I have to admit, the first page is actually very clever - kids do pick up a lot from their parents that can warp their view of the world, so learning to equate flowers with emotional manipulation because of an abusive parent really does go a long way to explain Pamela's mentality.

It's a shame that they didn't use the rest of her story to flesh that out a little more, instead of the generic 'cheated through school, swears revenge on those who don't appreciate their genius' backstory.