Posted in: Comics, DC Comics | Tagged: dc comics, harley quinn, heroes in crisis, poison ivy, Tom King

What Did DC Comics Expect From Poison Ivy in Heroes In Crisis?

Published Mon, 18 May 2020 10:00:11 -0500

Last updated Sat, 23 May 2020 08:51:00 -0500

Recently, Bleeding Cool has been talking a bot about the portrayal of Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy at DC Comics. It seems a little on the odd side, with editorial making changes to remove the previously-approved relationship between Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy, and trying to scrub it from the comic book history – all the while that the TV show is embedding it further

The aim appears has been to restore Poison Ivy as a Batman rogue, a proper bad guy within the DC Universe, rather than a lead or co-lead character. While Harley Quinn was also mostly seen as a bad guy, it was fine for them to be a couple. But with Harley Quinn becoming more of a protagonist, and less of a mass murderer, with Poison Ivy cast as someone who makes her better, the two strands couldn't coincide in the DC Comics Universe. Bleeding Cool had previously looked at the split=personality approach DC Comics seemed to take to the character over the last few years.

We looked at the way that Heroes In Crisis ended, with Poison Ivy brought back from the dead, and reunited with Harley Quinn in a very non-vague way. Well, Bleeding Cool learnt that DC Comics were expecting something different, with Poison Ivy only returning as a bud, for Harley Quinn to then grow, and for this Poison Ivy to turn back to the one-or-two-note villain she used to be.

However, Heroes In Crisis writer Tom King had no intention of doing any of that. We had a fully restored Poison Ivy and a fully restored Harley Quinn/Poison Ivy relationship by the end, albeit it one where Ivy was looking a little greener than usual, and that was in his pitch and proposal.

What Did DC Comics Expect From Poison Ivy in Heroes In Crisis? Clay Mann art from DC.

But DC Comics is famous for not letting the left hand know what the right is doing. So the Harley Quinn/Poison Ivy mini-series was brought meant to sort that out and turn Poison Ivy evil. But it seems a similar miscommunication happened that instead it split her into two, an evil Poison Ivy and a not-so-evil version, though DC Comics were above to change one thing about the final issue, removing a more intimate scene between the two.

Given that no one seemed to want to write Poison Ivy in quite the way that DC Editorial seemed to think they were, aside from short stories by mystery writers for Walmart, that may be why the character has been put on ice in recent months. And why Sam Humphries was forbidden from using her in Harley Quinn and go for Booster Gold instead.

But bizarrely, while DC Comics has been befuddled about how to present Harley and Ivy, the Harley Quinn TV series has had no such compunction, and happy to show them as a couple. Might the comics publisher decide to give in and give the public what they clearly want, in the comics as well as in the TV? check out the appreciative YouTube comments.