[World of Bats] Poison Ivy Spotlight!

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Hello and welcome back to the World of Bats, the Batman Book Club!

This week, with Earth Day coming up, who better to talk about than one of Batman’s most eco-friendly super-villains, Poison Ivy?

So to highlight this character, we’ll be exploring two different stories with her. First, we’ll be jumping a little forward in our exploration of Tom King’s Batman run (don’t worry, we’ll be going back and filling in the gaps later!) and reading Batman #41-43, “Everyone Loves Ivy,” with art by Mijal Janin.

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“EVERYONE LOVES IVY” part one! Mikel Janin returns to BATMAN for a brand-new epic! Pamela Isley’s influence can spread as far as vegetation will allow, putting the whole world at her fingertips. Can Batman and Catwoman stand their ground against an entire planet of Poison Ivys?

Links:

Batman #41
Batman #42
Batman #43

And if you’re looking for more Ivy content, check out this one-shot graphic novel “Batman: Poison Ivy,” written by John F. Moore and drawn by Brian Apthorp!

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“POISON IVY.” When a Gotham businessman destroys Ivy’s island paradise, she sets out to destroy everything he loves, no matter whom she has to kill to do it.

Link:

Batman: Poison Ivy

The reading will go from 2021-04-17T05:00:00Z → 2021-04-23T05:00:00Z, though if you read these later and come back, that’s cool too!

So share your thoughts below! What do you think of these two different takes on Ivy?

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And if you’re looking for more Batman related goodness, take a look at some other awesome adjacent clubs!

First, don’t forget about the World of Bat’s month long Casefile, looking at the infamous All-Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder, by Frank Miller & Jim Lee!

@Bar-El is doing a neat read-along leading up to a watch along of the first arc of Superman/Batman and the animated adaptation, “Superman/Batman: Public Enemies”!

Over at Harley’s Crew, they are reading the last chunk of the digital first series, “Harley Quinn: Black + White + Red.”

Over at the Renegade Robins group, they are continuing their exploration of Damian Wayne in the first eight issues of Batman Incorporated Vol 2, and Jason Todd teaching a new generation of neer-do-wells in Red Hood: Outlaw!

And over in the Birds of Prey club, they’re approaching the tail end of their exploration of The Huntress in her 90s appearances, as well as the last one-shots leading up to the Birds of Prey ongoing!

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“Everyone Loves Ivy” was Tom King’s mea culpa for supposedly misrepresenting post-Flashpoint Poison Ivy as a killer during “The War of Jokes and Riddles.” I still remember the backlash over that whole thing, which left me scratching my head at the time.

It does make quite the odd double feature with the 1997 one-shot, which was a pretty obvious attempt to capitalize on the release of Batman & Robin. It’s right on the cusp of Ivy’s shift toward…not quite heroism, but at least moral ambiguity.

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Yeah, I noticed that too – I guess it’s hard for some people to look at her as more of an anti-hero when she’s killed in the past.

What’s funny is that I remember when this came out, King’s attempt to fix that backlash ended up causing some more in the form of Catwoman being able to take out the mind-controlled Flashes. I guess they felt that even with the massive handicap of being mind controlled, that taking out that many Flashes was too much for Catwoman to handle, which makes me wonder how they would have felt if Batman did it…

Yeah, I don’t think the one-shot is really the start of her less villainous arc, I think that only really happens once we get to No Man’s Land, but it does at least have her face off against people who are comparatively if not worse than her.

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@Jay_Kay if I can only fit one of these two options into my reading, which one is it? You pick, I’ll read.

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Hmm, that’s a hard one – between the three issues and the one shot, they’re probably about the same length. Maybe Everyone Loves Ivy.

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Okay I’m in

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Well, I enjoyed the heck out of those issues. I have read them before, but this is an entertaining, save the world in three issues story. Harley works better as conflicted rather than evil, so this fits how I see her. Also, like that Bats fixes things with wits rather than fists. And, of course it looks beautiful.

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Now, the ‘you really didn’t kill anyone’ fix feels stuffed in there. I get why but it’s a little clumsy.

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Yeah, I really enjoyed Harley’s use in this as well, I thought it was a great comparison and contrast between them and Bat/Cat.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts! :smiley:

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I’m a little late finishing the reading this week. I enjoyed it but I think the idea of Ivy bringing order to everything at the cost of freedom is a bit of a dilemma for Batman that wasn’t explored much. Obviously it’s wrong for Ivy to mind control everyone, but she did end wars and feed everyone. It’s what Batman wants but at the cost of one of his core values. I’m not a writer, though, so maybe there’s not much there after all. :man_shrugging:

The one shot was interesting to me in that it drew parallels between Batman’s mission and Ivy’s mission to hunt down the incendiary gel people. Like many of Batman’s rogues she became a fun house mirror for Batman and his motivations.