35

Huh. Not that different from 34 truth be told.

Poison Ivy

Women I Love to Love

Pamela Lillian Isley first appeared in Batman #181 in 1966. Like Athena she appeared fully formed and without a back story. Showing up in basically a leafy swimsuit, tights(character design by Shelly Moldoff) and very little story she failed to catch on first go around.

Unable to capture the public's imagination in #181 Poison Ivy was shelved (if you don't count Siren played by Joan Collins on The Batman TV show) until feminism began to saturate the public and the need for more independent, beholding to no man, women were needed. Be they superhero or villain. Especially since Catwoman was becoming more and more sympathetic to readers and less a villain. On her reintroduction she appeared in Batman Comics and Suicide Squad. With all these manifestations a true origin was needed for Ivy.

She was now Dr. Pamela Isley, a brilliant botanist. Until the Floronic Man (aka Dr. Jason Woodrue) showed up in her life. Experimenting upon her, trying to hybridize plants and humans, he pumped her blood full of toxins. With those experiments she became immune to all poisons, viruses, bacteria, and fungi and just a touch bit insane. The experimentation also left her unable to mother children and plants became her substitute for the children she could never have. In one of these early stories during a fight with Catwoman one of Ivy's own formulas fell on her, turning her skin green. The transformation from Dr. Pamela Isley to Poison Ivy was now complete. One of Ivy's chief new powers was the ability to control plants telepathically.

Another nifty ability she uses is being able to release plant pheremones to control men or women and making them fall madly in love with her. One of her favourite powers is releasing either toxins or pheremones through her kisses.

Coming out of Batman: The Animated Series (Writing, Paul Dini, artist/character design Bruce Timm) is her friendship with Harley Quinn (aka Dr. Harlene Quinzel). Wanting only to get Harley out of her abusive, destructive relationship with The Joker, Harley and Ivy team-up from time to time.

The most recent change to her character was during Batman: Cataclysm storyline where Ivy took care of some children, recently orphaned during the earthquake that nearly leveled Gotham City. She began to believe that her powers and the poisons she gave off were sickening and killing some of the children in her charge. For this reason she convinced Batman to take her powers away and make her only human again. Later convinced by the villain Hush to retake the serum to reaquire her powers the process apparently killed her. When her grave was visited it was covered in ivy and vines making her 'death' short lived.

She returned in Gotham Central #32 to murder some of the cops she reckoned killed one of her orphans.

Poison Ivy is one of my favourite Batman villains because she believes what she's doing is right. Not like some of the mustache twirlers who just do evil for evil's sake and wish to take over the world. Her next main appearance is during Battle for the Cowl in Gotham City Sirens, co-starring Catwoman and Harley Quinn. I really dig Dini's take on all these characters and I reckon it's going to be the best out of the bunch along with Detective Comics starring Batwoman. So, fingers crossed that it's as good as I hope.

Below are some of my favourite Poison Ivy pics. Please click to embiggen.

Final Cut of X-Men Origins: Wolverine Trailer

So, what do you get when you already have one full fledged proto-trailer and three baby protos? A 2:29 trailer with just under 16 (?) seconds on new footage. Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson/Deadpool is still unmarred (Dammit!). Taylor Kitsch as Remy LeBeau/Gambit showing his pimpaliscious (really? The Firefox spell check is going to let pimpaliscious fly, but not Deadpool?) silk, purple shirt. A teenage Scott Summers damaging school property. Liev Schreiber still looking as the best thing in this movie as Victor Creed/Sabretooth. Also possible appearance of mystery mutant Weapon XI. As well as Logan asking the question that he didn't ask in the original X-Men movie, "Wow, Vic. How'd you grow another foot in the 15 years since we last saw each other?" No, that's a lie, but I really wish it would.

Movie Trailers - Movies Blog

I Won! I Won!!

Thought you got rid of me, huh? Thought planet earth finally had enough and spun me right off? Nope. My darling son infected me with daycare-itis. Meaning I got a temperature of 101.7 and a hideous stomach flu for 5 days. Good times, good times. Okay, a lot of bathroom times, but still...

Awarded Bits

I won an award!

No, really.

Stop laughing.

I can wait...

Is it out of your system yet? Good. Now, the lovely Becca at No Smoking in the Skull Cave gave me a Dardos Award. Becca said that the best part of this award was that you get to pass it on....ummmm no. Best part? I won an award!!! Second best is the paying it forward.

The Dardos Award is described as thus: An award given for recognition of cultural, ethical, literary, and personal values transmitted in the form of creative and original writing. These stamps were created with the intention of promoting fraternization between bloggers, a way of showing affection and gratitude for work that adds value to the Web.

Now here are the rules:
1) Accept the award by posting it on your blog along with the name of the person that has granted the award and a link to his/her blog.


2) Pass the award to another five blogs that are worthy of this acknowledgment, remembering to contact each of them to let them know they have been selected for this award.

Easy, yeah? Some of these people may have won this before, I don't know. I do know that they're five of the personally done blogs that appear in my feed reader that I read daily without fail. Here they are, in no particular order:

Rich is a helluva nice guy and his blog is a geek goldmine. Doing everything from comics (funny that, what with the name and all), to toys, to movies, to TV (his Lost posts are especially entertaining.)



SamuraiFrog is just someone who does his blog to entertain himself. If others happen to be entertained as well? Bonus. His political rants are epic.


Darius Whiteplume does a fabulous shrine to the female form. What's really nice is that it goes through the ages, and Pam Grier week is coming up!


Rokk Krinn and his fellow contributors do some of the most in-depth and wonderful weekly comic reviews out there. I never miss it and always wait until I've read what he's reviewing. I may not always agree, but he always backs up his points.


Dr Zaius knows that apes can do it better, and continues to show us how in his blog. This is a man...er...ape can do a political cartoon capable of making you shoot your morning coffee out of your nose at supersonic speeds.

Once again, Cheers, Becca. Make sure and check out hers and all the other people's blogs I've mentioned. Thanks.