Her time as mayor of Gotham City is coming to an end. Her allies have betrayed her. Her enemies from within and without are at the door. Poison Ivy has to make a choice that will possibly doom all of Gotham. The prologue to “Bad Seeds” is in Poison Ivy #47, written by G. Willow Wilson, drawn by Leonardo Fernandez, colored by Arif Prianto and lettered by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou.
The “Bad Seeds” event begins in the Batman: Bad Seeds — Sunset one-shot, where Ivy commands prehistoric plants to begin taking over all of Gotham, leaving the Bat family scrambling to protect the city and try to find a way to save the city. The one-shot is written by Matt Fraction and G. Willow Wilson, with layouts by Giuseppe Camuncoli, finishes by Cliff Rathburn, colored by Tomeu Morey and lettered by Clayton Cowles.
Will Nevin: And so we have finally come to the thing: It’s “Bad Seeds” time, m’boy.
Matt Lazorwitz: It is! And we’re going to cover as much of it as we can. I don’t think we’ll do the issue-by-issue sections like we did back in the old days, but just a discussion of all the books coming out that week. I think that sounds like a plan, yes?
Will: That’s the ticket! And we can point out specific issue things along the way if necessary. Smart and simple.
Bad Seeds Week 1: A Blooming
Matt: So, this week we have a prologue in Poison Ivy and the first of our bookends, Sunset. In the least surprising statement ever, I read all the Bat titles, regardless of whether we’re reviewing them or not. You might read a thing here or there we’re not reviewing, but focus more on the core line. I want to know, how did you feel jumping into Poison Ivy at this point? How much sense did or didn’t it make to you?
Will: It definitely changed my notion of exactly what “Bad Seeds” was going to be. I assumed this was going to be “Attack the Bat” — the final, desperate assault against the Bat family with Poison Ivy and Vandal Savage working together. And while that might be the focus at some point, at the outset, this is squarely a Poison Ivy story — one in which she’s ready to send Gotham back to the prehistoric age to save her own leafy hide. Apparently she murdered a bog thing? That was certainly news.
Matt: OK, so you picked up most of what you needed from this, yeah. She did indeed kill Bog Venus to save the life of her sidekick, Janet from HR, a little ways back, just for clarity. I am deeply amused that we’re getting an Ivy-centric event, spinning out of a Poison Ivy comic series that was originally slated to be a six-issue mini that is now pushing 50 issues. Shows what happens when fans, and DC editorial, get behind a book.
There is something about this as a concept that feels less removed than our typical Gotham-in-peril story. Sure, “City of Bane” and “Joker War” were one villain leading an assault on Gotham too, but here, we’re in Ivy’s head more, which helps, and she’s not imperilling Gotham for some nebulous, “I want to destroy Batman” plan. It is well in line with who Ivy is, and we see her, if not struggling with the decision, at least having an emotional reaction to harming certain people in the city. It adds a layer of humanity that neither Joker nor Bane had in their stories.
Will: It’s a calculated, self-serving thing, but it has a personal cost to Ivy: namely putting the handful of people she cares about in danger and bringing about an end to her term as mayor. Oh, what the hell are the people of Gotham so mad about? That was a question I had here. Well, when all the plants and plant monsters start taking over, they have a right to be angry, but they’re clearly quite done with Mayor Isley *before* all the plant shenanigans start.
Matt: They are mad about possibly the most fantastical thing they could be mad about: a politician not keeping their campaign promises. Ivy promised all sorts of things that green, socialist candidates promise, but instead she just started murdering corrupt contractors, empowered Savage and let the cult that worshipped her as a messiah, the Order of the Green Knight, run roughshod over civil liberties if you were not treating mother nature as they believe the people should be. I’m sorry, folks, you vote in a supervillain, you get what you pay for.
Will: That’s certainly what I would tell the people of America Gotham. I will say, though, the writing of the first few pages of Poison Ivy was fairly clunky, what with the mob of people shouting “We believed in you!” Not much nuance there. And to get all of my gripes about that book out of the way, you know how excited I was to see my favorite letterer in comics with all of the various and sundry WAYS to show emphasis and all those fun balloon shapes!
Matt: Oh, I knew that was going to bug you! But by the end of the issue, we do get a good explanation of why Ivy is going to do what she does, and the table is set for a solid opener to the actual event. There’s a lot going on in Sunset, but it didn’t feel overwhelming, at least to me. We’re seeing Batman rally the troops, Ivy deal with the fallout of her decision, and Jim Gordon being, well, a damn good cop.
Will: Unironically being a damn good cop! I was a fan of, like you said, how naturally Poison Ivy rolled into Sunset and how it nicely set the stage. Visually, I also liked how Sunset is continuing the graphic design from Batman. While we won’t see that in every book across the event, I do hope we get that in Gothams General and Central — if only because those books don’t have an aesthetic of their own. While we will agree on Waylon’s design not being great here, it was nice to see him pop up as not a mindless monster. Remind me the last time we saw him? Was it Batman #1?
Matt: Yes, that sounds right. He was a supporting character in Poison Ivy for a while before that, so bringing him back here, and him being the one to talk to Batman about Ivy, makes a lot of sense, and his interaction with Batman is natural here, thanks to Bruce’s kindness to him in that last appearance.
I think the setup here does answer one of our questions that we’ve been asking from reading Batman. We were figuring this event would be Savage’s downfall, but if he’s the one standing against Ivy, well, Gotham may trade one supervillain mayor for another. Unless Savage is smart enough to realize mayors require the mandate of the people, while Gotham police commissioners only require enough dirt on the mayor to stay in power, so why swap to that more tenuous position?
Will: Commissioner Gordon vs. Mayor Savage would be an interesting fight to watch, namely because Gordon would take exactly zero shit from him (assuming Barbara is safe). We’ve got to get back to a regularly corrupt Gotham at some point, and GCPD will definitely need some house cleaning, because, as we see so far, they’re pretty goon’d up and cowardly under Savage.
Matt: I think that will play out in Batman after this is done, since Savage is also in with Minotaur, and judging by solicitations, we’re going to be focusing on him once “Bad Seeds” is over.
I also enjoyed how much of the Bat family we see in this issue. Fraction has not forgotten Duke Thomas, so that’s certainly novel, and I feel like Tim Drake will be back in costume soon. Maybe not by the end of this event, but Bernard is seeing Tim for who he is. It does lead to the question of whether Bernard knows Tim’s identity, as made pretty clear in the short-lived Tim Drake ongoing, or if that was forgotten and we’ll get a whole other thing, but Fraction has not forgotten my favorite Robin.
Will: Tim Drake is your favorite? I had no idea. Seems like everyone — maybe even Bernard — is going to get pressed into duty here. I hope we keep the map showing where the Family members are — that was a nice way to both get the scope of this unfolding disaster and to see who all the players are. That’s something previous stories like “City of Bane” and “Joker War” didn’t do particularly well.
Matt: This is the most expansive Bat crossover since “Fear State,” and I’m hoping it does a better job than some of these previous events of feeling cohesive. “Fear State” and “Joker War” felt scattered, just like we’re dropping these books into an event framework, rather than all of them being part of a well-thought-out story. This opening makes me think we’re moving in the right direction. I don’t think it’s something that will move directly from one book to the next, like “Contagion” or “Cataclysm,” but I just have this vibe that this was thought out. I think if you read the bookends, Batman and Poison Ivy you’ll probably get the basic story and not miss the core beats, but I think this will be a good experience to read the whole thing.
Will: You know me, I’m not normally for events, but DC has done a nice job not burning the audience out on them, and I’m really looking forward to this one. We’ve got a couple of four-book weeks that might make the column a little tricky for completionists’ sake, but I’m excited. Should be a fun time. ESPECIALLY with Gotham General and GOTHAM CENTRAL.
Bat-miscellany
- A Patreon request has us reading Batman/Green Arrow/The Question: Arcadia and two stories where Bat family characters meet those other heroes over on the BatChat podcast.
- Your clickbait shit headline of the week: “Tim Curry Played a Classic DC Comics Villain On A Hit TV Series.” (He was the original Joker — if ever so briefly and never aired — for Batman: The Animated Series and G. Gordon Godfrey on Young Justice.)
Matt Lazorwitz read his first comic at the age of 5. It was Who's Who in the DC Universe #2, featuring characters whose names begin with B, which explains so much about his Batman obsession. He writes about comics he loves, and co-hosts the podcasts BatChat with Matt & Will and The ComicsXF Interview Podcast.
Will Nevin loves bourbon and AP style and gets paid to teach one of those things. He is on Twitter far too often.
