Powers and Abilities

Powers and Abilities

The dangerous experiments placed a deliberate overdose of plant and animal based toxins into her blood stream that make her touch deadly and allowed 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.

Ivy is known to be able to seduce men and women alike, often using pheromones to do so; she is even able to use these to control Superman, although she requires kryptonite for them to work.

She specializes in hybrids and can create the most potently powerful toxins in Gotham City. Often these toxins are secreted from her lips and administered via a kiss. They come in a number of varieties, from mind-controlling drugs to instantly fatal narcotics.

In some adaptations, she can control plants with her mind, create them from plant matter of any size, mutate them into plant creatures and monsters that she can control with her mind, and have a psychic and empathic link to them. She can generate mutated plant chemicals and spores from her plants or her body, which can modify plant traits, be used to attack people, and also control the minds of humans. This mind control is sometimes being caused by fungus-like plants being generated by the plant chemicals and spores reacting to organic matter, or the mutated plant matter growing on or inside a victim of her mind control. For example, while in Arkham, she is able to manipulate and animate plants, using roots to form supports for a tunnel she and another inmate named Magpie are 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, who he calls the 'May Queen'. Writers have not referred to her in this way in quite some time.

In Batman: The Animated Series, her only physical power is an immunity to poison, and when using a poisoned kiss, she uses lipstick poisoned by 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.

She is also shown to be a skilled gymnast and hand-to-hand combat. She manages to defeat Batman with hand-to hand combat at least once through Batman: The Animated Series.