...that women do not commit serial murders.
To be honest, the idea of doing Poison Ivy didn't enthuse me. She comes across to me as just a sexy lady in green. And, well, by and large she is. While most of the villains of Batman are pretty complex or compelling, she isn't (as far as I am aware, I don't know much about her.) So I decided I'd start playing with her and see if I couldn't come up with something that actually interesting to me and that was to some extent actually creepy.
Most people have this misconception that there are no female serial killers. This is not the case at all. Sadly, women actually tend not to get caught as often when they do kill because overall they tend to favor poison and slower methods that are harder to track then men. One of the more common stories you seem to hear about with women who kill are women who are caretakers poisoning those they are suppoused to help.
So with that in mind, I came up with Dahlia Belquis (yes, I know the actual Poison Ivy has a totally different name, but I'm just starting from scratch here, let's pretend there is no Pamela Lillian Isley).
Dahlia Belquis was a nurse by day and dabbled in researching the medicinal properties of plants after work. She had a daughter who came down with a terminal illness. In an attempt to help save her daughters life, she gave her an injection of plant-based medicines that she thought would cure her. Sadly, it sent her child into cardiac arrest. However, when the autopsy was performed, Dahlia realized that the organic compounds that had caused her daughters death had dissipated in her blood stream. Essentially, the medicine she was researching was an untraceable poison.
Dahlia had never been a particularly stable woman emotional, and after her daughters death she realized that she rather liked being doted over by people who felt badly for her. She found the sympathy appealing ina way nothing else had been and she found the idea of herself enamored with the idea that others viewed her as particularly caring and devoted. Shortly after the funeral Dahlia moved to Gotham. She needed a new start, she needed to go somewhere where no one knew about her child.
A recent bout of bizarre ilnesses have been plaguing Batman's city. (Think like the Tylenol murders in the 70's, Dahlia is somehow tampering with drugtstore medications to induce illnesses.) No one can figure out what's causing the illnesses, and sadly, they seem to occur most often in children. Batman tracks the clue's to Gotham's children hospital where there seems to be an especially attentive nurse attending a large number of patients.
So yeah, basically I turned Poison Ivy from a sexy environmentalist to a nurse who studies organic compounds and has a severe, severe case of Munchausen by proxy syndrome. I imagine that somehow, when Batman (and I for some reason imagine him taking this case on with Batgirl) corner this woman she's freaking the hell out and probably has a mental breakdown based around the fact that even though she was trying the help her, she actually killed her own daughter.
But hey, at least she's still a redhead in green.
Oh, and if you're curious about what plant she's pinching there (and what she's wearing in her hair), it's suppoused to be white Oleander, a relatively common, but super poisonous decorative plant. Well...suppoused to be...but I got lazy drawing it.
