Ivy's Vineyard - Page 1 
Poison Ivy







     Botanist turned supervillainess Pamela Isley, better known as Poison Ivy,
isn't a name that comes readily to mind when considering heroines.  But since
she wound up on the side (if not in the company) of the angels during her
brief career with the Suicide Squad I've decided to include her.  Besides
why should the good girls have all the fun?
     With her ability to control plantlife and a foundness for vines Ivy was
forever binding heroes and heroines.  But sometimes she could get herself in a
bind.  Like the time she underestimated the ruthlessness of Robin II (Jason
Todd) when her decided to persuade her to deactivate her psuedo Swamp
Things in Detective Comics 534.





     A little later having pissed off her parole officer so that she was
transferred from Gotham Prison to Arkham Asylum Ivy was recruited by Lashina
(in her Duchess guise) to forcibly recruit the Suicide Squad members she
needed for cannon fodder.  They started with Nightshade in Suicide Squad 33.





     After the resulting fiasco and their return to Earth, Ivy talked Amanda
Waller, the Squad's commander, into giving her a chance to serve n the covert
Supervillains-for-Uncle-Sam agency.  It was better than returning to Arkham
and gave her the chance to have some fun.  Soon Ivy was showing her fortitude
in the field.





     The Squad was eventually shut down by the US government as politically
embarrassing then revived a year later by Amanda as a mercenary operation
with ties to no government.  The new Squad was for hire to anyone who needed
expendable metahuman agents.  Cut loose when the original Squad shut down Ivy
rejoined after an attempt to play Evita unravelled in bloody revolution.  She
made the major mistake of enslaving the manic-depressive Count Vertigo with
her mind controlling bio-chemicals.  Vertigo didn't appreciate being used
as her boy toy and swore to kill her when he was free of her influence.
Forced to free him during a mission to Israel Ivy decided descretion was the
better part of survival and fled.  But she failed to stay out of trouble as
during the War of the Gods (another of those multi crossover things that
I never cared enough about to read except where it crossed into a title I
bought regularly) she stumbled onto the hidden headquarters of Circe, her
beastmen and her middle eastern Amazon allies in Suicide Squad 58.





     Lucky for Ivy their policy was to take prisoners rather than kill
intruders.  Unluckily that meant interrogation and the Amazons weren't much
on finesse.





     Another mixed blessing was that Black Adam had just recruited the
Suicide Squad and the Masters of Industry to provide a distraction
while he took on Circe.  So Ivy had a chance of being rescued.  Too bad Count
Vertigo was the one who found her.







     But he did.  Fortunately for Ivy the Masters of Industry's leader Maser
didn't have a grudge against her.




     Ivy recovered from her ordeal and stuck with the Squad until it dissolved
a second time.  Subsequentally she started become more of a plant elemental
than a supervillainess and was actually serving as guardian to a group of
orphan kids in Post-Earthquake Gotham City (aka "No Man's Land") when she ran
afoul of Clayface.





     More recently she's returned to her villainess roots and become as
inseparable in comics from Harley Quinn as their cartoon and Gotham Girls counterparters
making them the latest dynamic duo.  Or, from a purely moral standpoint, The
Gruesome Twosome.






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