Poison Ivy (Uma Thurman)

"Hell, I am Mother Nature."

- Poison Ivy

Poison Ivy was an arch-nemesis of Batman.

History
Poison Ivy began as Dr. Pamela Isley and is shown researching in a Wayne Enterprises-funded lab in South America. It's here that her botanical aspirations and scorn for mankind are made known as she is focusing on creating a new breed of plants with abilty to "fight back like animals". Dr. Isley's work is not going well with numerous failed attempts but notes, with certain disdain, her progress is being hindered significantly by her on-site colleague. Her already-strained relationship with her partner and boss, Dr. Jason Woodrue is further disrupted when Isley makes note of his constant theft of her research materials- namely animal and plant venom samples. Investigating, she discovers him, offering up Bane, a soldier enhanced and fuelled by Venom, a toxin-derived chemical of Woodrue's own creation, to various bidders. Bane lashes out, and Isley is revealed in the fracas. Woodrue asks her to join him, but when she declines, he kills her by throwing her into a shelf full of chemicals (including a canister labeled Venom, the same drug that creates Bane).

Creation
Some time later, Woodrue entered the former Dr. Isley's dormant workstation, conversing with the winning bidder of Bane on his cell-phone. Walking over and disturbing her unnatural grave, a strange event occured, gaining the would-be dictator's attention. The ground began to shake and emit a strong pink light; he moved forward slightly when the earth seemingly erupted, expelling a reborn Pamela Isley veiled in a mix of vines, dirt and smoke as a similar pink light fell on the woman, harkening her coming. Dr. Woodrue fell to his knees at her sight. The woman he once knew was no more. The frumpy, busy-body co-worker had been replaced by an ethereal goddess of irresistable beauty. The former Isley seemingly shrugged off her apparent death as a good night's rest while her dumbstruck boss looked on. Acknowledging him at last, Pamela spoke to him in a charming manner, playing off his new infatuation with her. She explained to him the resounding effects of the animal-plant toxins had on her reborn body. They replaced her blood with aloe, she revealed, and her skin with chlorophyll. There was one final component that was yet to be revealed and she revealed it with a "hands-on" demonstration. Leaning forward she took Woodrue by the cheeks and chin and pulled him towards her, speaking to him seductively of the newly-infused properties of her lips. Isley kissed him passionately and he eagerly kissed her back. When she broke away from him, Isley finished her statement. Her lips were filled with venom. She had given him a poison kiss. Within moments Woodrue died of organic poisoning as Isley tauntingly gave him a post-kiss warning of her lethality before pushing him over to die. Her revenge complete, Isley trashed her workplace, shattering vials, spilling chemicals and finally starting a fire. All the the while proclaiming herself "Mother Nature" and her aspirations for floral world-dominance with her at the frontline. Catching the logo of her now-former work sponsor (Wayne Enterprises) on a nearby vial, she concocted the next step of her plan. With Bane in tow, the woman formally known as Dr. Pamela Isley headed for Gotham City.

Arrival at Gotham
Soon after, she appeared in Gotham under the guise of her former persona, Dr. Pamela Isley. Hearing over the radio that her old boss, Bruce Wayne, was at a tour of a new telescope being donated by Wayne Enterprises to Gotham Observatory, Isley headed there and informally confronted him during the press conference that followed. Despite her impromptu entrance, Wayne lended her an ear and Isley handed him a proposal that would use the power and resources of Wayne Enterprises to cease all current activity that toxified the environment. Her proposal was politely declined by Wayne when he noted the devasting effect it would have on human life ("People come first, Dr. Isley"). Taking back her proposal, the rebuffed Isley menacingly declared the coming of a plant-based apocalypse (hinting at her own nefarious plans) to all that would listen. Pamela Isley's prophecy of doom was met with jeers and laughter, even the open-minded Bruce Wayne chuckled a little. It was then that the popular Gotham radio personality, Gossip Gerty told Isley of Batman & Robin. The crime-fighters protected Gotham City- even from plants and flowers. Isley "laughed" along with them, at her own ignorance. To soften the blow a little, Bruce Wayne handed Dr. Isley an invitation to a "Save the Rainforest" Ball for Gotham's rich and famous, where the Caped Crusaders would make an appearence. She took the invitation and with that Bruce Wayne ended the conference and bid her farewell. Scheming to herself, Isley slyly waved the entrepeneur goodbye. Upon leaving Isley immediately began to concoct a new plan. A plan to rid herself of the only men who would stand in her way, Gotham's "animal-protecters"; Batman & Robin.

Poison Ivy
It's still not clear how Pamela Isley gained access to the Gotham Plaza where the lavish ball was held but none who attended can forget her entrance. The event hosted many dancers in wild and colorful costumes to fit the theme to accompany the auction that was the highlight of the ball. The prizes in question were glamorous models under flower-based names (Magnolia, Tigerlily etc.) for all manner of rich businessmen in attendence could bid for. It was at this point that Batman & Robin appeared at the proceedings and it was at this point that Isley made her move.

Just when the bidding began to heat up the loud and flash music stopped. It was replaced by a sultry, seductive number and one by one everyone's eyes were drawn to the lone pink gorilla high on top of the grand archway, shaped like a tribal statue mouth that served as the ballroom's centerpiece. Having gathered everyone's attention, the figure began to hypnotically dance to the music. As the music gained momentum, the mysterious figure began to perform an exotic striptease, removing the hands revealing slender green-dressed hands with ivy-shaped pads on the palms. It was then the figure removed the head to reveal a stunningly beautiful woman as the mystery guest. It was Pamela Isley, as she was upon the night of her murder of Dr. Woodrue. Her red hair was tied back yet still long and flowing and she wore a green, leafy eyemask, highlighting her emerald green eyes. Spying her targets, she raised a palm to her face and blew a pink, wisp-like powder over the stunned crowd which had an intoxicating effect on her surveyers, causing them to fall blissfully in love with her- including Batman & Robin. Several bare-chested, jungle-attired men in the crowd began to walk to the ground near her as though being controlled by some means. The former Isley finished her tease by dropping the costume to the ground revealing a green ivy-fashioned bathing suit with green tights. She looked over at the equally-bewitched Dynamic Duo and winked seductively at them both before dropping off the archway into the waiting arms of the jungle men. Isley stood up and then faced the stage where Batman & Robin stood and extended her arms for the men closest to her to take. In response, the others fell to the ground and she walked across their backs to the stage, never taking her eyes off her new enemies. Batman & Robin met her at the edge of the stage and helped her on to it. The green woman greeted the two with a smile, prompting the MC guiding the event to ask her her name. In a firm, dominant voice, the woman declared herself as Poison Ivy to all on-lookers at the ball. The crowd were well and truly mesmerised so Ivy began to go to work. She blew another cloud of her love dust into the face of Batman first and moved in close. Seemingly out-of earshot, she flirted with him, insinuating a desire for him over his younger partner. Ivy broke away from him and blew yet another cloud, this time into Robin's face. Playing off his youthful ego Ivy offered him the choice to join with her over his mentor. Leaving the two reeling Ivy took a priceless necklace- "the Heart of Isis"- from Comissioner Gordon's hands and put it around her neck, deeming herself the winner. Taking the microphone from the stunned MC, Poison Ivy spoke to the crowd, offering herself up for auction. She moved back between the Caped Crusaders and handed the microphone back. Immediately Ivy started getting bids much higher than for the other girls. But even more surprising Batman & Robin started to bid too, ending in a fierce and heated bidding match which Batman was winning.

Before he could enjoy the spoils however, Mr. Freeze and his entourage of thugs quite literally crashed the party. He smashed his tank-like Freeze-Mobile through the teeth of the archway where Ivy appeared and Freeze himself emerged from the top of it and used his gun to turn several party guests into ice sculptures- to Poison Ivy's awe and amusement. While his goons distracted Batman & Robin, Freeze approached Ivy and the diamond necklace he was there to claim. Freeze conversed with Ivy before threatening her with death for the "Heart of Isis" around her neck. Ivy responded with lovedust which Freeze inhaled sternly before correctly identifying it as pheromone dust, noting its intended effect on the male gender. Ivy was taken aback by the result of her dust- or lackthereof- before Freeze told her his immunity came with his cold-blooded condition. Losing patience Freeze asked for the diamonds once more and Ivy relented, letting him tear them from her neck. Having claimed his prize, Freeze bade her farewell and raced off to his vehicle. Ivy sported a sultry smile and slyly waved after the villian in response.

The chaos had died down by this point and Batman & Robin were finishing off the last of the goons when Mr. Freeze tauntingly announced his departure to them before he vacated the premises. With Freeze gone Ivy looked around to see the Dynamic Duo approaching Commissionor Gordon. Ivy walked over and stood beside the man in question, in sight of Batman & Robin. Batman relayed information to help save the frozen party guests to his ally and then immediately gave pursuit. Robin was ready to follow but he had caught Ivy's gaze and was rendered immobile by the sight of her once more. Poison Ivy pouted her lips and blew a kiss to the Boy Wonder, leaving him with lingering thoughts of her, as she had in mind. By this point Batman had realized Robin was behind and literally had to drag him away from her. Her own plans for the time being seemingly in tatters Poison Ivy was getting ready to leave herself. Taking a nearby snowglobe of Gotham City with her as a memento of the night and Mr. Freeze, Ivy regrouped with Bane and left the party, remarking to the giant, "We've got work to do!"

Renovations
Poison Ivy sauntered through the maze-like alleyways of Gotham City with Bane close behind looking for a place of dwelling. For while Ivy had made a lasting impression on the city with her appearance at the ball, she had still only arrived in town and was without a lair; at least one fitting of her.

As they walked Ivy remarked about her new enemies, recognising their strength of will against the effects of her lovedust. But nevertheless she shrugged it off as inconsequential, believing they would be at its mercy with a more potent dose. It was at this point Poison Ivy stumbled upon a promising candidate for a garden lair; a boarded-up Turkish bath-house located on Blossom Street in Gotham's now non-existent theatre district. Vandals had spray-painted warnings on the planks of wood that barricaded the entrance in an attempt to ward off intruders but Ivy had Bane break his way inside regardless. The pair stumbled upon a street gang known as the Golums congregating within, plastered in skull-motif facepaint masking their identities. Emerging from the dust and doors Ivy surveyed the interior, acknowledging it needed work but was pleased with what they had found. The gang made their presence known, gaining the pair's attention. They began to bear down threateningly on the intruders while their leader leapt down from a make-shift "throne" to the front of both parties. Disregarding Bane he menacingly flirted with Ivy, complimenting her on her good looks. Vainly, Ivy agreed with him and proposed a challenge: to come and get her, if he could. She pushed the button on Bane's chest and Venom pumped into his muscles putting him at maximum power. Then she moved out of the way to spectate the coming brawl. The Golum leader accepted and ordered the gang to attack. Immediately they were overwhelmed by Bane's superhuman strength and were forced to flee for their lives, leader and all. The bath-house was now under Poison Ivy's control.

Immediately they began to re-model the building to her own desires. Bane burst a nearby water-pipe to fill in a large empty space in the floor which would become an indoor pond and Ivy planted seeds of her own creation that sprouted and grew of their own accord until they were literally part of the furniture, all for her. Pleased with the progress so far Poison Ivy sat on her new, now-vacant throne and spoke with Bane about her encounter with Freeze. She marvelled at the power he possessed and spoke cryptically of her next plan.

Arkham Asylum Breakout
Poison Ivy's next appearence in public effectively changed her status from a mystery to mysterious criminal. Ivy had learned that the Mr. Freeze had been captured by the Bat and was currently imprisoned within Gotham's infamous Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane. It's here that the next stage in her plan had had begun. She planned to spring Freeze from his inprisonment and have him join forces with her.

Poison Ivy arranged to visit the villain under the guise of Freeze's sister. The disguise fooled those in charge of the prison and Ivy was granted entry to his cell as an ordinary civilian. The pair of snarky officers who guarded her target received a call for her entry and announced her arrival to a sullen Mr. Freeze. While he was not expecting visitors Freeze was even more confused by the nature of the visit- as Freeze had no sister. The guards admitted the woman entry and Freeze recognized her immediately. Her appearence and clothing had changed slightly but there was no denying it. It was Poison Ivy. The woman he encountered on the night of his very capture. But the guards didn't know that. As the door closed behind her, Ivy shed the dark-green cloak she was wearing and revealed a new costume from the one at the ball that highlighted her slender figure. She now wore a green skin-tight latex cat-suit and dark green thigh-high heeled boots with a similar colored belt round her waist, emblazoned with a yellow emblem of an ivy on the front. Ivy wore dark-green gloves with red and magenta on the fingertips. The green eyemask was now a warm gold, complimented by her intense red hair which now curled into two cones before falling to her shoulders. Ivy looked at Freeze, taking in his reaction and curved her full, red lips into a seductive smile.

Needless to say the guards were stunned by her while Freeze unsurprisingly remained bemused. One of the smitten guards at her side earnestly told Poison Ivy not to mind their presence, that she could speak freely to Freeze. Seemingly repulsed by the mere thought of the guard conversing with her, Ivy clearly had other ideas. Brushing one gloved hand off the other Ivy blew a potent cloud of lovedust from her palm into the guard's face, increasing his infatuation with her a hundred-fold. Turning around to the other guard she flirtily replyed that she didn't mind him at all. She blew another cloud into the other guard's face with a mirrored effect. Now that they were under her spell, Ivy looked at Freeze to show him the result. She playfully hit the men on the chest with her hands and walked away from the door, the guards following her close behind. She spoke to Freeze sardonically about the men behind her, deriding the male population as the inferior race on Earth. Using her status as the mothering force of nature, Ivy declared that while they gave them life... they can also take it away just as easily. Stopping a distance from the door Ivy turned around and playfully prodded the first guard in the chest, adding emphasis to the final thought of her monologue. While the guards were listening to her every word, they shrugged off her proclaimations with chuckling ignorance. Freeze had been watching her display and was listening too. Ivy merely smiled seductively at them both. She then faced the second guard and put a hand on his face and he put his arm around her waist. With one last thought Ivy moved and kissed the guard on the lips, pulling away after a moment. The toxicity of her lips seemed to have been increased as the guards seemed to succumb to the venom much more quickly than Woodrue. As her victim went down, Ivy turned around and grabbed the other guard by the face and kissed him passionately. He reacted to her poison and struggled to get free but he was dead by the time she removed her lips from his. Letting him fall to the ground like a ragdoll, Ivy turned around look at Mr. Freeze and proudly posed for him in front of her latest murders.

Analyzing the poison-filled corpses that were once his guards, Freeze stood up and complimented Poison Ivy on her deadly abilities. Ivy returned the thought and walked over to him and talked about join forces in exchange for help in springing him free. Freeze acknowledged her proposition but was skeptical. He asked her what she wanted out of the bargain. Ivy's vain smile turned sinister for a moment but told Freeze to forget about it for the time being and walked over to the cell door, as she wanted to introduce him to someone. There was a sound of chaotic commotion in the corridor outside with men yelling, crashing and what sounded like growls of a large beast. Ivy opened the door and let in her servant, Bane, and then closed and locked the door behind him. Bane was the source of the snarling as he'd smashed through the prison defences to deliver Mr. Freeze's stolen cyro-suit from storage up to his cell. Pleased with Bane's performance, Ivy smugly put a hand on Bane's hulking shoulder and looked to Freeze and introduced him to the fellow villain. Freeze marvelled at the beast-like man and graciously took back his suit.

The guards who had been pursuing were outside the windowed steel door and were now cutting through it with welding gear. The mood in the cell hadn't changed despite the new development as Freeze was just finishing getting into his suit. He was himself once again. Ivy flirtingly asked him his size which Freeze claimed a size smaller than normal. The moment was interrupted by the guards as they began to bang on the door slowly trying to break it down. Now realizing the threat at hand, Poison Ivy pushed the button on Bane's chest once more and had him try to break the stone wall surrounding them. Bane did as commanded but to no avail, which Ivy correctly recognized as reinforced steel to her visual dismay. Freeze came to the rescue, his scientific mind seeing a way out of their predicament. He led the pair to his cell's sink and turned on the cold water, opening up a panel on his arm, he wrenched free a small pipe from its socket, expelling a constant high-pressure blast of cyrogenic air. Aiming at the running water, it had an instantaneous freezing effect on it and all the water connected to it. The chain-reaction ran from the tap to the pipes to walls where they ran. The effect was so extreme that wall itself shattered in an explosion from the pressure of the intense and sudden frost. Ivy and Bane were taken surprise by it and instinctively shielded their eyes. Regaining her composure as the guards began to break open the door, Ivy ran to the hole but stopped short of running through, as the hole led to a perilously high drop into the water below the island prison. Freeze came behind and helped get her act together and they both jumped into the abyss to her obvious displeasure. Bane followed behind and did the same. By the time the guards had reached their exit point, the trio had hit the water and were too far away for even bullets to reach them. Poison Ivy and Bane had sprung Mr. Freeze from Arkham Asylum and were already heading for their next destination.

The Telescope Unveiling
Believing she is the dominant woman, she unplugs his wife's life-support system and claims that Batman did it, using this to encourage Freeze to begin a plan to freeze the entire Earth and then replace human life with her mutated plants, the two of them serving as the rulers. However, although she captures Batman and Robin with her plants, she is defeated by the new Batgirl, her deception subsequently being revealed to Freeze in Arkham, who has personally sworn to make her life "a living hell" for almost killing his wife.

Powers and abilities
She had the ability to kill someone with a poisonous kiss, but it is unclear wether she could control plants, because in the scene before she is beaten by Batgirl, she exclaimed "My vines have a crush on you!", pointed to Batman and then her vines wrapped him up and tried to suffocate him. So it is unclear whether she could control plants or her vines are just bred to be able to attack at a whim. Her subsequent defeat also throws doubt in whether she could control plants, as Batgirl physically throws her back onto her 'flower bed' and is non-fatally crushed by the bed's petals. It is completely ambigious as whether this was a defense mechanism, perhaps a further trap for the seduced Robin (Chris O'Donnell) or the Animal-Plant hybrids attempting to overthrow their part-human mistress. She could also blow plant pheromones into the face of her victims in order to seduce them into following her orders and make them vulnerable to her advances and poisonous kiss. This, along with her natural beauty, made her a very dangerous seductress. Very few could resist her charms. Not even Batman and Robin were immune to her affections.

Weapons, equipment, and technology
Poison Ivy bred Animal-Plant Hybrids.

Appearances

 * Batman & Robin
 * Batman & Robin (Book)