Poison Ivy #2

[cyberghostface]

"Did you enjoy Annihilation?? Or Hannibal?? Then this is right up your street and you should pre order ASAP." -- G. Willow Wilson

Comments

[lbd_nytetrayn]

Sigh, just give us an Ivy we can cheer for, DC.

...wait, didn't I once read here that they did just that? An evil one and an at least considerably less-evil or antihero one?

If so, is this the evil one?

[cyberghostface]

They were combined into one being at the end of Tynion’s Batman run.

[lbd_nytetrayn]

You can't imagine how disappointing that news is to me.

[windleopard2]

Name and issue number of this please?

[cyberghostface]

https://www.gamesradar.com/batman-117-poison-ivy/

[armycat23]

Frankly, Ivy hasn't been written well that often in decades, imo. There were certain parts in Gotham City Sirens that I thought she was ok and that time when she took over the park and was protecting those kids.

Her shouting "Attack" while pointing like she's some sort of military leader hundreds of years ago, or something, is cringe. Of all things to have Ivy say in that moment, they chose "Attack!"?

[cainofdreaming]

She was good in Harley's previous ongoing. I'm still miffed that we lost that in favor of the current one, which is just kinda bland. And I don't really care for the art either.

[windleopard2]

May I ask what you would see as a well written Ivy and how Sirens provided that for you?

[windleopard2]

Which Annihilation is Wilson referring to?

The irony is that this is probably the first time since her inception that Ivy is written as having some understanding of the real problem with environmental degradation.

[shakalooloo]

The Annihilation movie on Netflix by Alex Garland. Real cosmic horror stuff.

[lego_joker]

Since her inception... where?

Ivy was originally created as a generic crook-of-the-day that only went gimmick-deep with plants. Even after she got legit scientist credentials/plant powers she spent years using them for petty robbery and extortion.

The environmentalist thing didn't drop until BTAS, and even then it was quickly phased out in favor of her hanging with Harley 24/7.

[windleopard2]

I recall there was a Silver Age story where she was killing people for ecologically motivated reasons and was opposed by Wonder Woman.

[deh_tommy]

Hot dang, how I missed this Poison Ivy.

[numeronone]

Yeah, this is the kind of environmentalism in superhero comics I can get behind. Striking at someone who's actually responsible while keeping the reader informed of the IRL problem.

[sadoeuphemist]

I don't really understand these sort of comments or comparing it positively to X-Men Green. Ivy is killing (planning to kill) totally random people here. "Who's actually responsible" is you and me, the end consumers, or in other words humankind in general. She wants to depopulate the human race.

[numeronone]

1) Ivy has precedence. We /know/ she's like this. It's not a random shift in characterisation for her to be murdering people. And the expectation is that she's a supervillain and will eventually lose, instead of teasing us with "They're the good guys!! But maybe...they AREN'T?!"

2) The comic is actually useful in raising awareness of the subtleties of modern approaches to "planet-friendly" things like using agave instead of honey. Killing an agave farmer for participating actively in reducing the bat population is way more proportional and sympathetic than randomly stabbing a customer service worker to death because of actions they had no hand in

3) The writing for this is, you know, good

[sadoeuphemist]

That makes no sense. How is some random agave farmer responsible for the ecological destruction caused by the entire agave industry, while some random store clerk who sells things in plastic bags isn't responsible for the ecological devastation due to plastic waste? They're both random cogs in the machine.

Also, again, Ivy is killing random people eating in a diner and all the people those people will randomly come into contact with, she's killing absolutely random people because she wants to kill humanity in general.

[numeronone]

Enh, agree to disagree. I still think it works better than whatever they think they're doing in X-Men Green, if only because these writers know what they want to achieve with the story.

[sadoeuphemist]

Of course it works better as a story, but the idea that Ivy is "striking at someone who's actually responsible" is absurd. The story is that Ivy has grown totally hopeless and nihilistic and wants to kill all of humanity. It's a horror story. It's her dark night of the soul.

Also I don't think that dude was even an agave farmer, he looks nothing like a farmer; I think he's just some random hipster vegan sourcing his agave syrup or whatever.

[numeronone]

Fine, cards on the table: I haven't read the full story, just the pages posted here.

In fairness, the smae goes for "X-Men Green".

[werehawk]

Biologist here. Ivy's justification is just totally wrong. Sure, skipping agave syrup is likely not a bad idea due to those farming practices. But we are not natural predators (these days) and our "prey" are farmed animals. Those farming practices are the most devastating cause of global warming and climate change, habitat loss, and drought. The vast, vast majority of crops grown are used to feed cattle and livestock. Being vegan (or at least reducing meat or cutting out beef) is actually far more environmentally friendly. The writer is just simply uninformed.

[sadoeuphemist]

You are misunderstanding what Ivy is saying. She's not saying that it's important for humans to eat meat in order to keep prey species in check. She's saying that humans are the prey species, and that she's the predator who's going to kill them all off. It's metaphorical.

[werehawk]

I went back and looked. I don't think I am. I think she is saying both what you are thinking and what I thinking. At one point she says that vegetarians think they are doing something by giving up chicken. And the truth is they are. https://vegsoc.org/info-hub/why-go-veggie/environment/
You are correct that I am wrong about the prey part as she goes on to talk about deer overrunning the forest. But the first part of the metaphor? analogy? is just incorrect on the author's part.

[sadoeuphemist]

She is saying that being vegan is pathetically insufficient. It's like saying, "you really think you're doing something by voting Democrat" when the speaker's position is that both parties are fundamentally corrupt/beholden to corporate interests/whatever. Yes, one may be better than the other, but Ivy's position here is that vegans will destroy the ecosystem just as surely as meat-eaters will, just at a slower pace.

This isn't a statement that has a factual truth value, any more than either optimism or pessimism can be said to be more factually correct than the other. This is just Ivy being doomerpilled and saying humans are going to destroy the planet no matter what.

[blues32]

She has never been like this. She's targeting CHILDREN. Ivy has never done that before. She's also attempting to trigger a massive extinction level event. Not just humans, but everything is going to die. This is way beyond the pale for her.

You think the agave farmer knows that he's reducing the bat population? He's a FARMER. Nobody's told him of the negative effects of his work, I'm sure.

As for the writing...it appears like she's using a fungus. The corpses in the first issue showed mushrooms, moss, and other fungi growing out of it. Fungi are from the Grey, not the Green. Poison Ivy should know this.

[morallyambiguousscience]

I'd sure love to see environmentalism in superhero comics that wasn't ecofascism, but at least this is better than x-men green.

[windleopard2]

I'm pretty sure Aquaman, Swamp Thing and Animal Man have tackled environmentalism without going ecofascist. Usually anyway.

[lego_joker]

Said it before and I'll say it again, environmentalism is probably the most difficult theme to satisfactorily explore with genre fiction (even setting aside the fact that Captain Planet preemptively made the whole thing a laughingstock). It, probably more than any other cause, needs you to look at both problems and solutions as long-term statistics instead of short-term single case-studies, and the latter is what 99% of superhero stories are built on.

[werehawk]

I think Animal Man being vegetarian was probably the most realistic way for a superhero to actually fight climate change and environmental degradation without being what might be considered ecofascism.

[janegray]

Can't believe people like this crap. I'm all for a """"villainous"""" Ivy who will not hold her punches to prevent environmental catastrophe, but this Ivy isn't "not pulling her punches," she is punching at the wrong target period

If she were serious about protecting the environment, she'd assassinate the like 20 billionaires who own politicians to feed the world to their companies. Murdering Random Farmer #74634684 and even children does nothing but make climate scientists look crazy.