Poison Ivy (comics) - Powers and Abilities

Powers and Abilities

The dangerous experiments that transformed Pamela into Poison Ivy placed a deliberate overdose of plant and animal based toxins into her blood stream that make her touch deadly while also allowing her to boost her immunity to all poisons, viruses, bacteria, and fungi. This immunity also includes Joker venom. Some comics have even gone so far as to depict her as more plant than human, breathing CO₂ and requiring sunlight to survive.

Despite retaining in her earlier appearances her Caucasian, red-haired appearance, in time the amount of vegetable toxins and chlorophyll in her tissue tinted her skin permanently green. After years of practice, she regained the ability to consciously control her appearance, restoring herself to an almost fully human facade, with only her lips and eyes tinted a bright shade of green.

Ivy's body produces pheromones that make people susceptible to mind control around her, although strong-minded people like Batman are usually capable of resisting. She was even once able to control Superman with the use of kryptonite and ordered him to fight Batman in a fierce battle that Batman managed to survive.

She specializes in hybrids and can create the most potently powerful floral toxins in Gotham City. Often these toxins are secreted from her lips and administered in her preferred way, a poisonous kiss, usually after professing false love or affection for her victim. They come in a number of varieties, from mind-controlling drugs to instantly fatal toxins.

In some adaptations, she can control plants with her mind. For example, while in Arkham, she was able to manipulate and animate plants, using roots to form supports for a tunnel she and another inmate named Magpie were digging to escape, and also spawning glowing fungi to entertain Magpie.

Poison Ivy is identified by the Swamp Thing as a being with an elemental mystical component, whom he calls the "May Queen". Writers have not referred to her in this way in quite some time. Ivy also shows capabilities of using the Green to communicate over great distances, as she manifests in a vase of roses in Zatanna's dressing room to talk to the magician.

Poison Ivy carries, on her current costume, a certain amount of live vines: coupled with her natural ability to commune with plant life, they act as weaponry, or defensive/grabbing appendages. Their supply is, however, limited.

Ivy's capabilities were greatly reduced in Batman: The Animated Series; her only physical power is an immunity to poison. Her deadly kiss was only possible with a special lipstick poisoned with toxins extracted from a plant. She admits to having a "hyperactive immune system" which prevents her from having children. In The Batman, she can even exhale mind-controlling spores in the form of a blown kiss.