A look back at Silver Age Poison Ivy
Sep. 10th, 2016 08:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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scans_dailySkipping forward a touch from out looks at earlier DC superheroes and villains, we come to Pamela Isley, aka Poison Ivy, who was introduced in Batman 181 back in 1966.
The story begins in at an exhibition about the three most dangerous supervillainesses in Gotham, though this being the 1960s, Bruce and Dick are more focused on how hot they are.
Despite being dazed by the flashbulbs, Bruce ducks away to swap into his Batman suit, where he's promptly beaten up by some hired goons Ivy paid $100 to beat up anyone who tries to exit the building.
Ivy's plan to become Public Enemy Number 1 (and to snag Batman and/or Bruce Wayne) begins proper, in a way which is... a touch convoluted.
The supervillainesses converge at the meeting place, and their henchmen immediately begin brawling, closely followed by Batman and Robin who join in the melee. The Public Enemies try to flee Batman, only to bump into Ivy.
This is arguably the only time in the story Ivy actually uses any plant powers, and she's not exactly that villainous either, coming across as more of a poseur more interested in manipulating men and having the title of Public Enemy Number One more than her later incarnations.
Interestingly, a lot of what he think of as the modern version of Ivy (plant-powers, an origin linked with the Floric Man etc.) comes from Neil Gaiman of all people, with first a peak at the revamped version in his Vertigo Black Orchid series, in which the titular plant-based hero goes to Arkham to ask Ivy some questions.
This was followed up by the story Pavane, which I've posted bit of before, which goes into more detail regarding her sense of detachment from regular people, as well as her somewhat predatory attitude towards sex.
In terms of shifts from her origin to her depiction in the present? Well, Ivy in the beginning was something of a flat character, who was apparently introduced as a replacement for the increasingly sympathetic Catwoman, following the rise of the feminist movement and the demand for more female villains. Somewhat unfortunately Ivy finds herself rooted in misogynistic archetypes (she manipulates men with her looks! *gasp*), which depending upon the writer can be used in either a good or bad manner.
Later portrayals introduced a ecological motive for her crimes (as opposed to purely financial gain), which was a feature which stuck more firmly, but like her sexuality how sympathetic this made her varies wildly upon the writer. During No Man's Land, for example, she was shown to be willing to raise and protect orphans who "respected the Green", which humanized her to an extent (ditto her friendship/romance with Harley Quinn), while at the same time making the times where she snapped all the more frightening.
Such as the time in Gotham Central, where two corrupt cops accidentally kill one of her charges while trying to rob a drug dealer, only to end up getting lured into her park while under the assumption that she was actually wanting to hire them for henchmen work. Effectively they managed to get away with the actual murder from a legal sense, as they bribed some of the CSI guys to deliberately mislabel the victim's personal effects so they'd get lost in storage... Only for the girl's stuff to end up being the "important evidence" that "Black Mask" wanted stolen from the evidence locker.
Ivy's complicated, but her depiction in different forms of media isn't exactly... consistant. Some writers play more to the feminist angle, others more on the exploitative side of things, others have her an either an environmentalist terrorist or merely someone who wants people to be more considerate when it comes to plant life, some have her be isolated, others have similarly damaged people getting drawn to her etc.
There is definitely a lot of material for them work with if they wanted, what with potential themes of agency, objectivication, alienation, sexuality, and such. Seems to be more of a market for umpteen Joker stories than ones about how creepy it is that people in-universe are willling to exploit a severely mentally ill woman for sexual or financial gain (such as the Birds of Prey Arkham guard who happily admits to selling candid photos of her showering to tabloid newspapers) though.
The story begins in at an exhibition about the three most dangerous supervillainesses in Gotham, though this being the 1960s, Bruce and Dick are more focused on how hot they are.
Despite being dazed by the flashbulbs, Bruce ducks away to swap into his Batman suit, where he's promptly beaten up by some hired goons Ivy paid $100 to beat up anyone who tries to exit the building.
Ivy's plan to become Public Enemy Number 1 (and to snag Batman and/or Bruce Wayne) begins proper, in a way which is... a touch convoluted.
The supervillainesses converge at the meeting place, and their henchmen immediately begin brawling, closely followed by Batman and Robin who join in the melee. The Public Enemies try to flee Batman, only to bump into Ivy.
This is arguably the only time in the story Ivy actually uses any plant powers, and she's not exactly that villainous either, coming across as more of a poseur more interested in manipulating men and having the title of Public Enemy Number One more than her later incarnations.
Interestingly, a lot of what he think of as the modern version of Ivy (plant-powers, an origin linked with the Floric Man etc.) comes from Neil Gaiman of all people, with first a peak at the revamped version in his Vertigo Black Orchid series, in which the titular plant-based hero goes to Arkham to ask Ivy some questions.
This was followed up by the story Pavane, which I've posted bit of before, which goes into more detail regarding her sense of detachment from regular people, as well as her somewhat predatory attitude towards sex.
In terms of shifts from her origin to her depiction in the present? Well, Ivy in the beginning was something of a flat character, who was apparently introduced as a replacement for the increasingly sympathetic Catwoman, following the rise of the feminist movement and the demand for more female villains. Somewhat unfortunately Ivy finds herself rooted in misogynistic archetypes (she manipulates men with her looks! *gasp*), which depending upon the writer can be used in either a good or bad manner.
Later portrayals introduced a ecological motive for her crimes (as opposed to purely financial gain), which was a feature which stuck more firmly, but like her sexuality how sympathetic this made her varies wildly upon the writer. During No Man's Land, for example, she was shown to be willing to raise and protect orphans who "respected the Green", which humanized her to an extent (ditto her friendship/romance with Harley Quinn), while at the same time making the times where she snapped all the more frightening.
Such as the time in Gotham Central, where two corrupt cops accidentally kill one of her charges while trying to rob a drug dealer, only to end up getting lured into her park while under the assumption that she was actually wanting to hire them for henchmen work. Effectively they managed to get away with the actual murder from a legal sense, as they bribed some of the CSI guys to deliberately mislabel the victim's personal effects so they'd get lost in storage... Only for the girl's stuff to end up being the "important evidence" that "Black Mask" wanted stolen from the evidence locker.
Ivy's complicated, but her depiction in different forms of media isn't exactly... consistant. Some writers play more to the feminist angle, others more on the exploitative side of things, others have her an either an environmentalist terrorist or merely someone who wants people to be more considerate when it comes to plant life, some have her be isolated, others have similarly damaged people getting drawn to her etc.
There is definitely a lot of material for them work with if they wanted, what with potential themes of agency, objectivication, alienation, sexuality, and such. Seems to be more of a market for umpteen Joker stories than ones about how creepy it is that people in-universe are willling to exploit a severely mentally ill woman for sexual or financial gain (such as the Birds of Prey Arkham guard who happily admits to selling candid photos of her showering to tabloid newspapers) though.
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Date: 2016-09-11 03:29 am (UTC)Poor, poor Pam. Every hand against you, even from the beginning.