Previously in Wonder Woman…

There is an island in the Ionian Sea, named Themiscyra, that for countless centuries has remained hidden to the world at large through ancient magicks threaded into the very soil and rock and ocean of the Earth. In recent times, however, this mystic shield has begun to fracture, for reasons unknown.

Themiscyra is populated by a clan of warrior women known as Amazons. The Amazons – daughters and grand-daughters of the goddess Hera, molded from enchanted clay from the banks of the island’s sacred twin rivers – have been charged with protecting a dark secret at the heart of the island, the Gateway to Tartarus. Legend tells that should a man – anyman – ever set foot on Themiscyra then this Gateway will be irrevocably sundered, releasing the myriad fiends of Tartarus and bringing about the end of all life. To guard against this, a solitary Amazon has been dispatched to the world beyond the island to determine the cause of the failing shield, and to remedy it. This champion’s name is Diana…

…and she has departed Themiscyra in the knowledge that, regardless of whether she is successful in her mission, she can never return to the place of her birth.

Recently arriving in Celestial City, Diana has thwarted the dangerous actions of a pair of gun-toting criminals who have modeled themselves on notorious felons Bonnie and Clyde, earning the attention of the local police. Meanwhile, at the scientific research facility known as the EDEN Foundation, a terrible accident has occurred that has seemingly claimed the lives of a number of botanical scientists, including a female professor named Pamela Isley. But Isley isn’t dead; instead, she’s been transformed into something far stranger, and deadlier.

Celestial City, and the world at large, is about to encounter the insidious Poison Ivy…

IN THE MORNING, GLAD I SEE
MY FOE OUTSTRETCHED BENEATH THE TREE

By Meriades Rai

The EDEN Foundation, Celestial City
Five Hours Ago…

At 12.45pm the Level 2 Research Floor cafeteria was already beginning to empty as scientists and general staff alike finished their lattes and soups and chicken salad wraps, and made to scurry away back to their private labs. Lunch break was their sole social interaction of the day, but even this precious hour could often be spent deep in silent thought. Scientists, on the whole, were an insular breed.

Doctor Jason Woodrue regarded his blinkered fellows with amused detachment, viewing the majority of them as little more than ants – or, perhaps, the proverbial lab rats. His current dinner companion, Doctor Alec Holland, was no exception. But he was decent entertainment at least, especially when he allowed himself to become outraged by one of Woodrue’s inappropriate comments, which was often.

“Jason, seriously,” Holland snapped, as he mopped a final dab of sauce from his plate. “The way you refer to women… you need to treat them with more respect, especially our own colleagues. Professor Isley is an accredited genius in her chosen field, every bit as much as you or I; she’s not one of your typical star-struck university students, or that waitress you picked up last week after the ballgame, what was her name…?”

Woodrue smiled. He was a slender, dapper man in his late thirties, with a thick head of dark brown hair and arresting eyes behind old-fashioned, wire-rimmed spectacles. The kind of man who stood out in a crowd, particularly in a crowd of introverts. “Ah, Alec,” he murmured, scrutinizing the younger, stockier fellow seated across the table from him. “Much as I appreciate your obvious wisdom in matters of the female sex, we should agree to disagree, yes? Darling Pamela is… different to my usual pursuits in many ways, in that assessment you’re quite correct. But, as I’ve said, when you peel away their perfumed veneer all women aren’t that dissimilar, not on the fundamental level. In fact, there’s little about them that we can’t learn from plants.”

Holland almost choked. “Plants? Oh, come on. That’s just deliberately provocative.”

“No, no. It’s true enough, I assure you. It’s simply a matter of putting down strong roots – providing them with a firm foundation, if you will – and then they must be nurtured, allowed to bloom. But whenever they start to grow wild… well, they must be pruned back. Kept in check.”

Woodrue mimed clipping with a pair of imaginary secateurs with some vigor, then paused for a moment or two before draining the last of his coffee and rising quietly from his chair. Alec Holland regarded the other man with an anxious half smile, noting how his expression was deadly serious. Almost… cruel.

“I thought you were going to make a joke,” he said, carefully. “You know, like they need to bedded down and watered regularly…?”

Woodrue met Holland’s gaze coolly, and for a long moment that awful expression didn’t change. Then, quickly, his smile returned. There wasn’t much wit about it. “Well, yes. That too.”

Holland continued to stare. Eventually, Woodrue turned away, still with that fixed smile. “Oh, Alec. If you’re going to be assisting in my laboratory when I set about analyzing the new Tylöskog specimen, you’ll need to adjust to my sense of humor,” he said as he walked away. “Enjoy the rest of your meal, yes?”

As Doctor Woodrue left the room, another man – a wiry chap in khaki jacket and slacks, part of the EDEN security unit – approached Holland’s table with a can of soft drink and a plate of sandwiches. Seeing Holland’s uneasy expression, Bryce Callaghan looked sympathetic.

“Real charmer, isn’t he?” he said. “You two known each other long?”

“Our studies overlapped in Berlin four years ago but we didn’t cross paths again until recently. You?”

Bryce shrugged. “Never even heard of him until eight weeks ago, when he came to work for EDEN. I don’t have much to do with him, truth be told. I get the impression that general staff are beneath him. And, when I hear some of his opinions on the world, well… let’s just say I never know when he’s serious. It’s comforting to think you have that problem too, what with being friends for much longer.”

Holland pursed his lips and looked down at his plate. He wasn’t so sure friends was the word he would use… but that wasn’t something he should be discussing with Bryce. He’d only been registered at EDEN for a month himself, and was still feeling his way around. Besides, Woodrue had requested him specifically for his latest research project, regarding specimens of newly discovered tree species harvested from prehistoric Nordic forestland, so he felt he owed him some measure of loyalty.

“You were talking about Ivy, right?” Bryce asked, between mouthfuls of sandwich. Holland frowned.

“Ivy?”

“Professor Isley. Pamela. That’s just what we call her, Poison Ivy.”

Doctor Holland sat back in his chair, his eyes narrowed. “That doesn’t sound particularly pleasant.”

Bryce shrugged again. “I heard you talking to Woodrue, figured you were of a same mind,” he said, evenly. “Sorry if I’ve said something out of line. It’s just… because of the way she is. Cold, harsh. So do you know her too? From before EDEN, I mean?”

Holland nodded. “We met in Europe as well. What I said to Jason, about her being different? I meant she wasn’t just some greenhorn fresh out of college who’d be taken in by his reputation and credentials. She’s an intelligent woman. Dedicated. A touch single-minded, perhaps. Also rather shy. I can see how she’d end up bullied in an environment like this.”

“Bullied? No, it’s not like that.”

“I think it probably is,” Holland snapped. “Cruel nicknames? It’s straight out of a children’s playground.”

He stood then, brushing himself down, and walked away from the table. Bryce stared after the Doctor with a look of bemusement. These scientist types? It wasn’t just Isley, it was all of them – they were just so damn uptight…

As Alec Holland exited the EDEN Foundation’s cafeteria he almost collided with the woman who was standing in the doorway. She was short and curvy, a touch on the heavy side; plain rather than pretty, with close-cropped brown hair and lucid green eyes behind her glasses; and she’d been listening to every word of the conversation that had just occurred, with the men oblivious to her presence.

Holland froze, his expression appalled. Professor Pamela Isley held his gaze for a moment or two before looking away, long enough for him to see the tears in those deep, wide eyes.

“Pamela? Pamela, I… no, don’t–”

But she was already striding away, her body language akin to a dog that had just been kicked. Holland groaned, leaning back against the wall.

Damn it…

The EDEN Foundation, Celestial City
Four Hours Ago…

“Damn it, lady! You’d better haul tail right back into that lab, or so help me–”

Colonel Steve Trevor was a hard-edged military man to the core, but right now his bluff and bluster was getting him nowhere. The woman – the creature – standing before him merely smiled sweetly at his threats, then extended an elegant arm in his direction. When she fluttered her fingers the air began to mist and shimmer, before suddenly being filled with a sudden fog of tiny yellow spores that glittered in the glare of the overhead fluorescents. Trevor stumbled backwards, instinctively throwing up an arm to protect his face, but it was too late. He would have been better holding his breath. Instead he inhaled a shaky lungful of something akin to dusty gold pollen and immediately began to choke and swoon.

“Pamela, stop it!” a female voice cried. “Please, what’s happened to you? What are you doing…?”

The woman who had once been Pamela Isley turned towards the elderly lady presently cowering against a bank of monitor screens. She was Professor Julia Kapatelis, one of EDEN’s chief scientists and also a prominent member on the institute’s board of directors. Pamela had liked Julia in life, as much as she’d liked anyone; Julia had never been kind exactly, she was rather too officious for that, but on the other hand she hadn’t been cruel. Not like the men. When the time came for her to perish, Pamela promised herself that she wouldn’t draw the process out. Bryce Callaghan, on the other hand…

“I told you,” Pamela purred. “Call me Ivy now. Poison Ivy. That’s the name most of you knew me by anyway, yes?”

Ivy now turned to the other side of the room, where a wiry man in a khaki security uniform was trying his best to hide beneath a table. Bryce. Ivy smiled wickedly.

“Fetch,” she whispered, gesturing with a languid hand. Behind her, a thick tendril of plant matter immediately slithered to attention, uncoiling like an anaconda and lengthening across the room. Minutes earlier, Ivy and a number of her fellow scientists had been congregated in Doctor Jason Woodrue’s laboratory, conducting an examination of a curious new specimen of plant that had recently been discovered in the primeval forests of Sweden. An accident had occurred and Bryce, observing events on CCTV, had put the lab in automatic lockdown and declared all eight scientists inside to be dead, according to the lack of life signs registering on his output monitor. Everyone had then been so very surprised, Bryce most of all, when movement had been detected in the lab, followed swiftly by Ivy battering through the supposedly unbreachable iron bulkhead with the help of a throng of monstrous, impossible plants.

Now Bryce shrieked as he was dragged from his hiding place, the plant tentacle wrapping about his legs so fiercely that his bones and muscles had already been ground to pulp by the time he was lifted into the air, upside down, to hang before Ivy’s amused inspection.

“Pamela…” Julia croaked. “Don’t do this.”

Ivy’s eyes darkened. Not Pamela. Not any more.

She was different now. Pamela Isley had been short and mousy. Overweight. A shrew. But Poison Ivy, oh… she moved with a sensual elegance, her hair no longer a weak and colorless brown but instead the rich crimson-gold of maple leaves in fall, her newly-fashioned, sultry body encased in delicate, flowering vines, her flesh now a luxuriant, summer-kissed green, her perfume heady and exotic… she was different, she was new, she was alive! It was Pamela who was dead.

Bryce was shrieking incoherently, blood rushing to his head. The tentacle about his legs was pulsing, suckling. Feeding on him. He was dead too, he just didn’t know it yet. Ivy reached out and cupped the guard’s scalp, her fingers rubbing intimately at his close-cropped hair, and in that moment he opened his eyes, momentarily cogent as their gaze met.

“You made her cry,” Ivy said, sadly. “Poor, poor Pamela. You and all the others. Cold, you called her. Harsh. Oh, my darling… let me show you harsh.”

And then Ivy took Bryce’s head in both hands and slowly began to twist, her newly developed musculature cording beneath her lush green skin and proving more than equal to the task of removing that head from Bryce’s shoulders. She took her time however, wrenching back and forth almost teasingly, tearing his thin neck like snapping a dead branch from a trunk. She then laughed delightedly as she completed the decapitation with a final flex of the wrists, removing a goodly portion of his spine with a wet slither. Blood spattered then pooled, and Bryce’s headless body began to shiver with convulsions.

Looking on, Julia Kapatelis screamed.

Ivy cast Bryce’s severed head aside, then smiled and raised her fingers to her soft lips, licking at the thick saltiness with a small, green tongue.

Oh, yes. It was all going to be different now…

Close to Gateway Park, Celestial City
Four Hours Ago…

“Put your hands where we can see them!”

Diana of Themyscira scowled in bewilderment as a man in a dark blue uniform bellowed at her through a loudspeaker, while another half-dozen similarly clad men made an effort to encircle her, firearms drawn waveringly in her direction. Numerous shots had already been discharged against her, to no discernible effect; she had merely raised her arms and the flurry of bullets had been drawn – wondrously and magically – to the gleaming golden bracelets she wore sheathed about her wrists. These bullets had then simply dropped with an impotent clatter about her feet, without hint of a deadly ricochet.

The approaching officers looked on in astonishment and fear. This woman standing before them – statuesque, regal, clad in an elegant bodice and boots of crimson, silver and gold – certainly seemed human, but there was undeniably something otherworldly about her, and not just in her air of preternatural strength and dusky beauty.

“I mean you no harm,” Diana said, mindful to keep her voice low and clear of aggression. “I come here, to this city, because I seek to protect my own world, not to imperil yours. I only wish to visit the place called EDEN, and then–”

But Diana wasn’t granted the opportunity to finish her request, for in that moment she was consumed in a blaze of bright light… and then vanished, leaving behind her a bewildered troop of officers, each of them wide-eyed and slack-jawed.

For a moment, no one lowered their weapons. “What in the name of…?” one officer breathed, turning in a slow circle. “Everyone stay alert. Be ready for–!”

Be ready for anything. It was a command easier said than followed, because what came next was every bit as improbable – as impossible – as their brief stand-off with the disappearing woman with the bullet-deflecting bracelets. In that second, the asphalt beneath their feet suddenly lurched and shook and cracked, scattering officers and gathering bystanders alike in all directions. The air was filled with screams that were quickly drowned out by a far more terrible sound: the splintering of concrete and glass, followed quickly by a series of explosions, and then…

…the arrival of the plants.

Celestial City
Now…

Four hours, that was all the time it took.

In his acclaimed ecological discourse The World Without Us, journalist Alan Weisman had postulated that – in the occurrence of a theoretical global extinction event wherein mankind simply ceased to exist – it would be merely five hundred years before forests and vegetation fully reclaimed the densely populated northern hemisphere, reducing man’s greatest cities to ruins amidst the unfettered growth of a new world order of plant life. Celestial City wasn’t the entire northern hemisphere, obviously, but it was a beginning. And, from its origins within a single laboratory at the heart of what had recently been the EDEN Foundation complex, the abrupt and unprecedented eruption of mutated plant matter had spread over an area of five square miles, absorbing – and devastating – all familiar manmade edifices in its path.

Now, mercifully, the chilling transformation of the immediate landscape had paused, albeit temporarily. Poison Ivy, the creature once known as Professor Pamela Isley, was tired from her exertions… and was in need of entertainment.

She smiled contentedly as she settled back upon a living throne of branches and thorns and shattered bones, raised high upon a platform of vines and earth, her long legs crossed before her and her lush, maple-scarlet hair flowing about her shoulders with a perpetual whisper of leaves in the breeze. The color of her skin fluctuated gently between white and pale green and darker jade, sometimes with a hint of gold, always pulsing with the steady throb of her new heart. Blood mixed with chlorophyll beneath flesh now rendered smooth, cool and waxy with mesophyll tissue. Her body’s natural perfume was sweet and rich, her aura dizzying with intoxicating pheromones. She was, quite literally, one with nature.

Before her, those humans who had survived this unexpected invasion of their territory now knelt in dazed supplication, vines slithering slowly around and between their legs like curious snakes. There were hundreds of them, these disenfranchised souls; thousands. Scattered throughout the newly birthed forests, these slaves could only anticipate their inevitable demise, unable to resist as a mist of sensory-depriving spores settled like golden dust in their eyes and throats.

Ivy luxuriated in the slowing of each and every heartbeat.

All hers. All belonged to her.

But she wouldn’t kill them; no, not at all. She was not cruel. The children, especially, were innocent. When she was done here she would allow them to leave. They would be homeless, cast out of this kingdom that had once been man’s city but which now was hers by right of conquest, but that was infinitely better than death. First, however, they would bear witness to her vengeance.

“Bring them forward,” Ivy breathed, a near-telepathic communication with the plants that roiled and frolicked about her like eager lovers’ tongues. “Let each of my tormentors have his time in the eyes of the Green Court, to prostrate himself before the mercy of his new, delectable Queen. And let each of them weep, and bleed, and scream.”

The plants did as bidden, and the first of the corpses they dragged forth from deep underground was that of Doctor Jason Woodrue. He was all congealing blood and punctured flesh sac, missing fingers and eyes and genitals and one foot; the forest insects had been ravenous, and as desperate to please their new mistress as the plants themselves. An hour more and the cadaver would have been reduced to a mere spittle of gnawed bone and the odd smear of intestines. But Ivy had other plans.

She flexed an elegant green wrist and purred deep in her chest, her red hair suddenly wild.

“Remake him,” her mind whispered. “Like me, like me. So that he may know… and so that he may understand what it is to truly be before we return him, shrieking and writhing, to the pits of the black.”

Again, the plants obeyed. And, slowly, the prehistoric heartflood of the world, a world before mankind, began to work its mutated magic, restoring Woodrue just as it had transformed Pamela into something so new and terrible.

Poison Ivy stretched languorously in her throne, knowing only that there was nothing that could possibly inconvenience her now. Unless…

A half-mile distant, deep in the forest, there was a blinding flash of light – a second one, identical to the first – and Diana of Themyscira returned to Celestial City. But, in those few hours, so much had changed, both for Celestial City itself and for Diana, now christened with a far more glamorous and human moniker.

Wonder Woman they’d called her. Those others – those men – with their incredible powers and colorful costumes. At first she’d been convinced that she would be called upon to fight them; instead she’d fought alongside them. But what of the future? Could she trust these others if and when she encountered them again, or were they the very threat she’d ventured into the world beyond her island to nullify? And–

Diana paused in mid-thought then stood to her full height, turning slowly and with eyes wide as she registered the full import of her new surroundings.

“…and,” she breathed, “what in Hera’s name has happened here in the brief time I’ve been away?”

She stared at the thick vegetation of the dark, primeval forestland that had replaced the city streets and buildings she’d been whisked away from not so long ago, then raised her hand to her temple, her fingertips seeking out her enchanted tiara. The Circlet of Athena, shining gold emblazoned with a crimson star at the forecrown, was a powerful artifact enhanced with a sliver of the Eye of Graeae. It gifted her with a measure of second sight, although the tumble of images that cascaded through her brain whenever she tapped into the Eye’s influence was often overwhelming; on this occasion, however, her mystic vision was terribly clouded.

She saw a large building crested with a sign – the EDEN Foundation again! – and then there was a serious of explosions and miniature earthquakes, and a rupturing… and then green. Green, only green. Diana scowled, perplexed. Perhaps, if the Martian hadn’t kidnapped her, then she would have been able to prevent whatever had occurred here – but then, without her aid, would those costumed men have succumbed to the demon Nebiros? All things were connected, that was one of her mother Hippolyta’s great teachings. Much to her chagrin, Diana remained a student – and everything about the world beyond Themiscyra was for more complicated than she’d been expecting.

Human.

The word whispered on a sudden gust of wind, rippling the branches and leaves of the surrounding forest. Not a spoken word, not in the truest sense. So what then?

Diana whirled, her hand instinctively traveling to her waist and the sword that was newly sheathed there in a golden scabbard at her belt. She smiled grimly as she drew her weapon. One good thing about being spirited away by the Martian and the others: she’d ended up better equipped than when she’d started. She’d coveted a sword since leaving the island, and now she possessed one… which was just as well.

Because the forest was beginning to come alive all around her, the trees twisting and darkening before her very eyes, reaching for her with clawed limbs even as the vines at her feet began to curl and coil and rise like green serpents, strangling the ankles of her red boots, intent on ensnaring her.

Human, the forest sang. Human bad. Human must bow to Ivy’s will.

Diana of Themiscyra, now also known as Wonder Woman, smiled rather sharply. Her eyes glittered with intelligence and passion and her heart rose exultantly as the thrill of battle – a thrill she’d been born to – came upon her, just as it had against Nebiros. This she understood.

“Unfortunately for you,” she told the encroaching plants, “I’m far more than human. I am Wonder Woman… and I bow to no one!”

NEXT ISSUE: Wonder Woman versus Poison Ivy, and… SWAMP THING!