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  1. #31
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    Quote Originally Posted by K. Jones View Post
    Yeah, Cheetah has been sympathetic ... forever. And in spite of being Wonder Woman's great foe, constantly helps her achieve victory against worse threats.

    Granny Goodness, maybe, though. But I guess she's not on the level of Darkseid because she's subordinate.
    Cheetah isn't WW's greatest foe. She's just the one most commonly used. Circe and Ares fill that role more often. Cheetah also hasn't always been sympathetic.

    And there are still plenty of female villains who are still evil. Cheshire is one example.

  2. #32
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    Quote Originally Posted by Arctic Cyclist View Post
    I mostly agree. It's interesting to realize that Ivy is one of the few villains that meets the definition of a serial killer, everyone else is a spree killer or mass murderer. She's scary because, even with the modern more heroic takes on her, she needs to kill. She has cool down periods, and then a build back up until she finds a victim. (Most notably Detective Comics 823) It's just that she's good, as the successful serial killers are, at portraying herself as a misunderstood victim who is trying to do what is best for the world.

    However, she's not. She's not even trying to do what is best for plants. Take "Cycle of Life" for a case study. It starts with her going to an African country to seek out a rare and endangered plant that is thousands of years old. Ivy tells her assistant that she's saving the plant, cuts off its roots, and takes it back to Gotham to utilize in creating her children.

    Stop. Think this through based on what we currently know about plants.

    First research keeps showing over and over again that plants, even the solitary appearing ones in extreme environments, have relationships from familial to friendships, with other plants, fungi, and animals. We now know that trees parent their young, or in the cases of secondary growth and pioneer species like birches, they will parent other species. Individual plants will have friends with other plants. They will develop interspecies relationships that run the gamut from parasitic (like most orchids) to commensalism to symbiotic. A healthy ecosystem like the one the poor plant that Ivy tortures, mutilates, and enslaves is from may not appear to have dynamic complex relationships, but it does. One of the more fascinating studies that has come out in the past twenty years is the fact that Hardwicke's Wooly Bats will form specific bonds with the pitcher plants they use as homes, to the point where other bats will not roost in the plant and the offspring of both plants and bats will roost together. Yet we have Ivy, who should know this if she's come out of a plant science degree program in the last twenty five years, saying that this plant that has thrived for thousands of years, has a root system that extends for hundreds of feet in all directions and then a mycorrhizal network that likes goes for miles connecting it to other plants, is lonely and wants to go with her.

    No it does not. Even houseplants hate being moved.

    From there she violently slices up this defenseless innocent, shoves it into a case, tears it from the home it has known, the one it knows from the genetic memories of its ancestors, a place of spare beauty and bright sunlight, with the quiet songs of distant friends and relatives, to the crowded, dim, violent, humid awful place that is Gotham. Again, why, as we and the plant must scream out, is she doing this? It would have survived the war and the burning, it has before, it could again. What it couldn't survive is being poached, which is what has happened.

    As everyone who has read the series knows, Ivy did it because she needed to harvest the chemicals in order to create bioengineered creatures to serve her.

    Do you know who does this? DO YOU KNOW WHO DOES THIS?!

    Monsanto.

    Poison Ivy is no hero. She is no anti-hero. She's Monsanto. She's one of the greatest villains the world has ever seen.

    Never forget this, nor that she tortures plants and enslaves them to serve her at the cost of the environment. This is why you only see her caring about invasive species, and the ones that have already been enslaved. She does not hear the songs of healthy plants, of healthy ecosystems which we now know are a constant. She probably doesn't even hear the heartbeats of trees, which researches have successfully recorded.

    She hears what she wants to hear, and has successfully convinced people that what she does is good, just as Monsanto has successfully managed to convince us that what they do is good and has created a stranglehold on plant science and agriculture. Pamela Isley is not a misunderstood environmentalist. She a self absorbed monster who tortures plants and forces them to do her bidding instead of protecting and caring for them.
    You know...this has me think of how in BTAS, Pamela was talking to her plant in her first appearance. " Oh, you've done so well today, sweetheart. Now, get some rest and don't worry, I won't clip off any more of your beautiful petals. Unless I need them". That said, yeah Pamela could be seen as a massive hypocrite. However you know what they say, "the most evil people in the world aren't selfish, they are self righteous."

    Quote Originally Posted by mathew101281 View Post
    Ivy is exhibit A of a trend I’ve noticed with female villains. Any female villain that gets popular get turned into a heroine. Their is no female equivalent to the Joker or Darkseid because any female rogue that would rise to that level would turn face long before becoming that infamous.
    Yeah I've noticed that too... It's funny as Ivy was literally created to have a girl who was BAD over the softened Catwoman...

  3. #33
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    The original Poison Ivy created by Bob Kanigher was bad, yes, but not really bad and seen to be someone who could be redeemed. Her badness was relative. She was appearing in a comic book where the Code said that women couldn't do sexual stuff and anything outside of strict vanilla behaviour was not allowed or had to be condemned in the story. So Poison Ivy had to be presented as "bad," but that gave Kanigher the cover to present a lot of kinky stuff that most adults thought was good--especially by 1966, when adults were breaking out of their repressive shells. To me she's a subversive character, because she's challenging what the Code was trying to restrict.

  4. #34
    Astonishing Member Tzigone's Avatar
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    You know...this has me think of how in BTAS, Pamela was talking to her plant in her first appearance. " Oh, you've done so well today, sweetheart. Now, get some rest and don't worry, I won't clip off any more of your beautiful petals. Unless I need them".
    I admit I don't remember the specific scene, but it is sort of horrifying, in its own way.

  5. #35
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tzigone View Post
    I admit I don't remember the specific scene, but it is sort of horrifying, in its own way.
    Ivy through a lot of BTAS is basically just a horror villain. She probably the scariest character in the whole show. Anyone remember stuff like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJXZ7TUxY9w the only time a character gets to this level of creepy is Joker in RotJ with Tim Drake.
    Last edited by Batknight; 07-19-2019 at 01:00 PM.

  6. #36
    The Spirits of Vengeance K7P5V's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tzigone View Post
    I admit I don't remember the specific scene, but it is sort of horrifying, in its own way.
    I remember that scene vividly. But I agree, that was a rather loathsome thing to do.

    Quote Originally Posted by Batknight View Post
    Ivy through a lot of BTAS is basically just a horror villain. She probably the scariest character in the whole show. Anyone remember stuff like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJXZ7TUxY9w the only time a character gets to this level of creepy is Joker in RotJ with Tim Drake.
    Agreed. Although, Ra's al Ghul was pretty creepy in "Out of the Past" from Batman Beyond.

  7. #37
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    Paul Dini is a fan of EEV11!!LL Ivy so no surprises that BTAS made her super terrible to the point of one-dimensional at times (which is the reason the two episodes that break this pattern, Harley & Ivy and House and Garden, especially the closing scene, are my favourite Ivy episodes from the show).

    The scene being discussed in particular is from Pretty Poison, the first time Pamela was revealed to be a villain on the show, after pretending to be Harvey Dent's doting lover throughout the first two acts of the episode, so they went overboard with underlining how her beauty and behaviour were all means of deception.

    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Kelly View Post
    The original Poison Ivy created by Bob Kanigher was bad, yes, but not really bad and seen to be someone who could be redeemed. Her badness was relative. She was appearing in a comic book where the Code said that women couldn't do sexual stuff and anything outside of strict vanilla behaviour was not allowed or had to be condemned in the story. So Poison Ivy had to be presented as "bad," but that gave Kanigher the cover to present a lot of kinky stuff that most adults thought was good--especially by 1966, when adults were breaking out of their repressive shells. To me she's a subversive character, because she's challenging what the Code was trying to restrict.
    And even in her first appearance she hinted at being a victim of a man (whether he abused her or seduced and then abandoned her wasn't clear, but it clearly left her broken).

    Then in the 70s, Gerry Conway made her an outright victim turned baddie with Redwood, a man who seduced and exploited her in the past, now reduced to her mindless slave/plant monster strong arm (I'm guessing this kind of inspired the Ivy/Bane dynamic in the Batman and Robin movie).

    Later in the 80s, Neil Gaiman made her more empathetic to the state of others in her appearance in his Black Orchid mini, and then writers in the 90s went all out in making her more sympathetic in general (the decade where environmental concerns finally started coming to the forefront of media and society). Her journey towards anti-heroism has been more gradual and consistent than even Selina's IMO.
    Last edited by Confuzzled; 07-28-2019 at 03:32 AM.

  8. #38
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    Quote Originally Posted by K. Jones View Post
    Granny Goodness, maybe, though. But I guess she's not on the level of Darkseid because she's subordinate.
    I think the just concluded Female Furies mini-series did a great job showing how conniving Granny is and her underlying motivation is to overthrow Darkseid for keeping her oppressed and his subordinate. Almost like an older, warrior version of Cersei Lannister from Game of Thrones, but one who views her 'children' as only pawns to be used for her own purposes and is not above having them killed when they become liabilities to her gameplan.

  9. #39
    Incredible Member regg215's Avatar
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    Honestly really prefer her to be an straight up villain. One of my biggest complaints about DC comics in the last few years is what they have done to Harley and Ivy, the continual push to make them " goofy misunderstood anti heroes" has been so annoying. They are both so much better when they are just straight up villains. They don't need to be complete psychos like Joker, they can have tragic backstories that make them sympathetic and demonstrate redeeming traits and occasionally make decisions that are somewhat honorable but they shouldn't be teaming up with batman or running around Justice league characters unless it's some sort of end of the world situation or special circumstance .
    "You know, there are some words I've known since I was a schoolboy: "With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.. The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged"- CAPT. Picard

  10. #40
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    Quote Originally Posted by Agent Z View Post
    Cheetah isn't WW's greatest foe. She's just the one most commonly used. Circe and Ares fill that role more often. Cheetah also hasn't always been sympathetic.

    And there are still plenty of female villains who are still evil. Cheshire is one example.
    Cheshire is sympathetic in Young Justice but she's pretty persistently "bad" in the books, yeah. Even when she turned up in Arsenal storylines it's like ... come on, Roy. "She's hot" is not a good enough reason to keep having this tet a tet.

    You're right about Circe though. I feel like we've seen her be a bit more ... well, sympathetic isn't the right word ... fleshed out and human in the last two or three years, it makes her quirky but she's still obviously scheming a big evil plot and toying with everybody. I always liked her look, thematics and place in Wonder Woman's stuff but between Rucka's run and JLDark lately she's probably been elevated to my favorite Wonder Woman villain.

    I'm thinking about Kanigher's original Poison Ivy appearance ...that story was riffed for the Animated Series take, too, albeit with some tweaks. But she was already being depicted as "not so evil" by the mid-70s, when she and Catwoman teamed up to beat up Madam Zodiac and Robin and Batgirl solved that issue. So by Batman Family she was already on track to be practically not a villain at all. Another 20 years before Harley Quinn would show up and Harley & Ivy would even become remotely a thing. And it's been 20 since then. Holy crap.

    I still think the problem of Poison Ivy can be solved the same way Killer Frost was, frankly. Since there's dichotomous conflicting versions of her being chronicled it's not that hard to divide them into two different people, especially since Ivy still has the Silver Age Origin story as Lillian Rose before Neil Gaiman of all people rebooots her with a different Secret Origin. The Ivy we know and love moves from Gaiman to Dini to Modern Day.

    Actually the split might be even easier now that Tom King killed her and revived her via the Green. Just do some comic book weirdness and have an evil version running around.
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  11. #41
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    For me i like anti-hero Poison Ivy . its my favorite!

  12. #42
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    I've always been a fan of longtime villains finding some form of redemption (Harley, Clayace, Luthor, Magneto, Jason, etc.). The same goes for Ivy. They don't have to go full on Justice League levels of good. But I've always found it kinda nice to see certain characters decide that being full on evil isn't their thing anymore. Do I want it to happen to all of them? No. Otherwise, there'd be no more villains. But right now, I don't mind it with Ivy.

  13. #43
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    Quote Originally Posted by PwrdOn View Post


    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.
    I'd rather go with powerhouse Ivy than another femme fatale. There are way too many of those in superhero comics as is.

  14. #44
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    Quote Originally Posted by Agent Z View Post
    I'd rather go with powerhouse Ivy than another femme fatale. There are way too many of those in superhero comics as is.
    But the Femme Fatale aspect is kind of inherent in her character. So I think she should be both to some degree.

  15. #45
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    I totally agree Jim. The BEST Poison Ivy was Batman 181 and 183. Batman 339 and 344 were great too. I loved how she had all those men and especially Batman under her control. Hate how DC has turned this great character into a half-insane person and I do not like at all her relationship with Harley. DC needs to get Poison Ivy back to her roots.

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