DC Teases the Secret Origin of a Fan-Favorite Character

As a hero, villain, and member of the Birds of Prey and the Gotham City Sirens, Poison Ivy has had a unique DC trajectory. More so than most, Ivy has been established with a few wildly different origin stories — and it sounds like a new one is on the way. According to DC’s recently-released February 2024 solicitations, the upcoming Poison Ivy #19 will bring about “the one true secret origin” of the character.  The issue, from G. Willow Wilson and Marcio Takara, will apparently convey Ivy’s “heartbreaking and historic” origin as told by herself.

Based on this description, it sounds like Poison Ivy #19 might not exactly match the previous origins Ivy had. Her initial Bronze Age origin involved her getting powers after surviving a murder attempt from Marc Legrand, while her post-Crisis on Infinite Earths origin revealed her parentage, as well as the abuse and manipulation she suffered at the hands of Dr. Jason Woodrue.

POISON IVY #19

• Written by G. WILLOW WILSON
• Art by MARCIO TAKARA
• Cover by JESSICA FONG
• Variant cover by DAVID NAKAYAMA
• Variant cover by YANICK PAQUETTE
• 1:25 variant cover by JEREMY WILSON
• 1:50 variant cover by DAVID NAKAYAMA
• Fruit of Knowledge Foil variant cover by JESSICA FONG ($6.99 US)
• $3.99 US | 32 pages | Variant $4.99 US (card stock)
• ON SALE 2/6/24
• A story decades in the making! Long has her tale been told by others, but witness for the first time, in intimate detail: the one true secret origin of Poison Ivy, as revealed by the viridescent villainess herself. The GLAAD Media Award-winning team of writer G. Willow Wilson and artist Marcio Takara reunites to tell this heartbreaking and historic origin story as only they can.

What Is DC’s Poison Ivy About?

In Poison Ivy, Pamela Isley has been a lot of things in her life. A living god, a super-villain, an activist, a scientist, and dead. In a new body that she didn’t ask for and with a renewed sense of purpose, Ivy leaves Gotham and sets out to complete her greatest work-a gift to the world that will heal the damage dealt to it…by ending humanity. 

“I don’t think you can lock her down,” Wilson explained in an interview with DC.com earlier this year. “I think her goals are noble—she really does love and care about planet Earth. Her motives are pure, but her methods can be shocking and inhumane. And it’s that juxtaposition that I really love to explore. You look around and, in many ways, large and small, we’re feeling the effects of a changing planet. There’s a lot of tension and anxiety about that. She shares those feelings, but she acts on them in a villainous way. She’s grown over the course of the last year. I think she’s kind of taken the fight to the main bad actors in destroying the Earth rather than kind of lashing out at humanity as a whole. There are villains who are evil, their methods are evil, their motives are evil, they’re evil top to bottom, and she’s definitely not one of those.”

Will you be checking out DC’s new origin story for Poison Ivy? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!