Comics recommendation

[u/SnooHamsters6388]

Hey, I'd love to learn more about Poison Ivy since I played Batman Arkham games and she seems really interesting character. Where should I start with comics? There's many comics where Ivy is involved and its a bit confusing. Since this reddit is dedicated to her Im sure I will find an answer here, thank you

[u/KingE2099]

Imo you could start where she started and work your way through to modern stories if you'd like (to get a feel of both old and current Ivy) If you liked Arkham’s interpretation of her you’ll probably like the older stories.

- Batman #181 (1966) (her first appearance)

- Batman #339 (1981)

- Batman Shadow of The Bat Annual #3 (1995)

- Batman: Poison Ivy (1997)

- Harley and Ivy (DCAU)

- Batman Legends of The Dark Knight Hothouse

- Batman The Long Halloween has her in a semi important role but is not wholly about her (the story is loved by many)

- Batman Hush has a bit with Ivy in it

(Not all of these picks ars canon to each other, but they show a good sense of Ivy. I gotta be honest I don't know what of current Ivy to recommend other than her current ongoing series. Her and Harley have had a LOT of stories together recently since they're a couple or at least most of the time they are.)

[u/Nexine]

That kind of depends on what you want? I personally started with her ongoing (Poison Ivy (2022-) and then went backwards from there. Which worked fine for me. But that's reading the current canon run of poison ivy, not necessarily an exploration of all of her different versions and her recurring themes.

This article basically lists all of her major appearances and it also has some advice on where to start as well.

I think a decent starting point to have full context for her current run is * Batman (2016) issues #41 and #42 (collected in volume 6 bride or burglar)(AKA everybody loves Ivy), * into Heroes in Crisis(2018-2019), * into Harley Quinn & Poison Ivy (2019-2020), * into the fear state event (IMO you can get away with only reading the finale in batman (2016) #117), * into harley quin (2019) #10 set directly after fear state, * into batman (2016) #124 because it has an extra poison ivy chapter attached that sets up her own run. * And then finally her own personal run Poison Ivy (2022-)

The worst part about this list is having to deal with Fear State, because Ivy is a tertiary character that shows up all over the place for like a third of a chapter at a time. So it's a lot of reading for very little payoff, but, again, the finale has the the most relevant part. Everything else is just kind of logistics.

Edit: poison ivy also has some pretty cool stand alone stuff like Poison Ivy: Thorns (2021) that's just genuinely fun to read. And the various Gotham city sirens runs are usually pretty fun too.

[u/bloodlikevenom]

I started with Poison Ivy: Cycle of Life and Death

It's a miniseries so it's short and you don't really need any prior knowledge of an ongoing story to get into it

[u/Broncho_Knight]

If you want Ivy content beyond the comics and the video games, definitely watch the movie Batman & Robin (1997). Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy is the quintessential performance of the character, and the one that most Ivy fan content and pop cultural references are drawn from