What's your preferred version of Poison Ivy?

[Tzigone]

Either a particular depiction/writer/media or just a build-your-own?

Anti-hero or villain? If a villain, tragic or not? Green skinned or not? Plant powers or drugged lipstick? Any ecological interest? Does she use seduction? Does she like kids?

I'm just curious as to which version people like best.

[Elmo]

Villain. She's not the same character when they make her an anti hero obsessed with saving the planet/plant life. What always made her appealing to me was her ability to control others in a malevolent fashion while appearing as a beautiful and benevolent figure. Even the name Poison Ivy represents that idea, because poison ivy itself is hard to spot if you don't know where/how to find it and can lead to some bad reactions. I see no reason for her to be an anti hero. Then again I care way more about Poison Ivy than Pamela Isely.

[Batknight]

Tragic villain femme fatale eco-terrorist with plant powers. I prefer her skin being pale white with a very light green tint with floral patterns. So something like this https://imgur.com/a/j8Tzk3U or this https://imgur.com/HaEsPpS. The version of her that's closet to my own is in the Arkham Asylum game, in that I pretty much see her as plant Magneto. To her, plants have as much right to live as people, probably more. Ivy sees humanity as a threatening blight the planet would be better without. She really only ever experienced the worst mankind has to offer and has been abused and taken advantage of her whole and desperately wants to separate herself from it. She has a connection to the green, the collective consciousness of all plant life on earth. She feels its emotions and pain. To her, plants are just as much people as human beings. The plant world treated her a lot better than mankind ever did and she has much more of a connection to plants than she does humans due to her being tortured and experimented on by Jason Woodrue who turned her into a plant/human hybrid which has given her a direct link to the environment on a telepathic level. When she sees the environment being harmed, to her it's no different than murder. If anything it's worse because she feels it all happening all the time, everywhere due to her mind being connected to the green. She really just wants to stop being in pain all the time and end the genocide of what she considers her species. Creating a perfect green world free of man's evil is the only way to do that.

[Starter Set]

I liked her fine in the Arkham games. Very cool version of her.

[Tzigone]

For my own part, I can't say I have strong feelings, which is one of the reasons I wanted to get a feel for what others thought.

I lean towards the villain end. I'm particularly fond of her controlling others, though less certain particular methodology. I less of a fan of the using plants-in-physical-fights bits, but I don't hate it. Just don't prefer it.

While the floral patterns look great, I have to think about whether I want her mixing with society (undercover in her schemes) and the degree to which an outside-normal-human appearance would hamper that.

[Jim Kelly]

The Poison Ivy that I fell in love with when I was a little kid-- in BATMAN 181 (June 1966) and 183 (August 1966). She is a villain but a very sympathetic villain--both Bruce Wayne and Batman do what they can to rehabiltate her. She has no super-powers--she just is an expert at using chemicals to enhance her attractiveness and get folks under her spell. Those two stories are pretty kinky (being written by Bob Kanigher) and Poison Ivy challenges the norms of society--which makes her an outsider and maybe that's why she is considered a Public Enemy. I never cared for making her into a plant or changing her appearance to that of a plant.

[kjn]

I like the anti-hero Poison Ivy, who is fundamentally caring and protective almost despite herself. Nocenti's "Batman & Poison Ivy: Cast Shadows" is a good example of an Ivy I like. An Ivy who carries an implied critique of the world order that Batman represents. Sensual where he is rational. Of nature where he is about the city. Protective where he is punishing. Avenging where he is forgiving.

Earlier I've thought of her as DC's equivalent of the Circe myth, but nowadays I'm thinking of her more as a Persephone analogue. And like the other Greek gods, she is not really good or evil, she is more representing forces and emotions. Persephone, like her mother Demeter, is bringer of both feast and famine. She was a saviour who also brought the curses onto the dead.

That doesn't mean I won't like or enjoy other takes as well. But one thing I really dislike is when she is made a victim of the male gaze and reduced to a sexual object. To me, she should be a sensous and sexual being, but always on her own terms.

[byrd156]

I like my villains to be villains. Having range is important so they can shift to more good or bad but stay firmly in the villain spectrum.

[Celgress]

Idealist turned tragic eco-terrorist/villain. Oh, and she can manipulate plants, has green tinted skin and grows leaves in place of clothing due to her plant-based mutation.

[Frontier]

A villain but whose motivations are sympathetic if not sustainable because of her methods and her lack of value for humanity.

You can try and maker her into an anti-hero but, at least for me, it comes off like trying to make her a completely different character and ignore/downplay the impact of her villainy.

Design wise, I don't think you can ever do better then B:TAS. Although I really liked her Justice League Action design.

[Jackalope89]

Little bit of A and a little bit of B, depending on the circumstance.

I'd have her establish safe havens for children (and educate them on the importance of plant life) as well as providing them fruits and vegetables. But lashing out at those that harm plants like weed and pest control people, land development, etc.

[SiegePerilous02]

B:TAS/DCAU Ivy.

She can have some sympathetic qualities and Pet the Dog moments (a lot of the male Bat-villains still have these), but I like her as a fanatical echo-terrorist who is disdainful towards most humans. She is arguably the most powerful Bat-villain and just as scary in her own way as the men, and isn't romantically tied to either Batman (Catwoman, Talia, Phantasm) or the Joker (Harley), and I dislike toning that down for yet another female anti-heroine. Mainstream comics are seemingly incapable of avoiding the whole "she's hot, so she can't be all bad" trope. Let Ivy be one of the bad guys, or at least no more "good" than Bane, Scarecrow, Freeze on a bad day, etc.

She's also just as controlling and abusive in her own way towards Harley as the Joker, and in fact belittles her intelligence even more than him. I'm still interested in their dynamic (and she's certainly overall the lesser of two evils), but I don't view it as an ideal healthy relationship, because that would be boring for a group of psychos like Harley, Ivy and Joker who are not meant to be role models.

[Batman Begins 2005]

B:TAS Ivy.

[Restingvoice]

Human skin eco-terrorist who evolve to be plant-like and eventually join The Green as a chaotic neutral force of nature.

Started out as a seductress with no powers beyond a botanist and biochemist expertise and intelligence targetting polluter billionaires.

Her powers are gained and evolve over time. Her poison kiss and pheromones started out artificial.
After the accident, they became a part of her body, now with added poison immunity.

During this early period, she may think she can communicate with plants, and obsess to make a world a better place by prioritizing plants over humans, but it's just her. Her ability to control plants are nonexistent, so she just resorts to experiments, creating plant men, giant man-eating plant, and so on.

She'll mutate further over time. Now her skin has chlorophyll and turns green, and with all those chemicals mixed in her blood that's initially used to mutate plants, she became a kind of a hive queen for mutant plants. She can communicate or control her mutant creations directly and secretes those formulae to infect regular plants and turn them into her minions. This is her seemingly magical ability to control plants anytime anywhere.

At this point, she's a Legion of Doom level villain, and it wasn't until she turns around will she be accepted by The Green.

Once she stops defying natural order, The Green can accept her, and as a part of them, she now does have an actual magical ability to control plants instead of pseudo-science. The Green is the neutral natural order, so Ivy doesn't need to be a hero. Her priority is still and always is the plant, the earth, and the natural world, she just doesn't need to seduce billionaires now.

The more she has powers over nature, the less seduction she needs.

This evolution happened over... let's say from Bruce started as Batman at 25 to my present-day timeline in his 40s.

So... my preferred version of Ivy is the evolving one. Started out as a villain but slowly change into something more complex, but her number one motivation, regardless of her alignment or which side she's on, is the natural world.

[PwrdOn]

Visually, I prefer the version of Ivy from her 1997 one-shot, as I generally find she's more relatable as a human with a plant-themed costume, rather than some kind of living plant with green skin and mutated features. Personality wise, she should be genuinely committed to her environmentalist causes but also misguided to an extent that gives her irreconcilable conflicts with Batman and the other heroes, though she may well find that their interests align from time to time and team up to take down a more dire threat. I feel like a lot of Ivy fans want to really emphasize her abilities and turn her into some kind of powerhouse, but that doesn't really fit her character as far as I'm concerned. Her powers can come into play in interesting and visually appealing ways at certain points in the story, but fundamentally she should primarily rely on her wits, charm, and sexuality to get her way. Her extreme arrogance and disdain for others is a fatal flaw that the heroes can exploit, and in any kind of direct confrontation a trained combatant should be able to put her down for the count with relative ease.