"To live is to walk towards death...one footstep at a time. We're bound together by roots we can't see or explain."
Poison Ivy/Swamp Thing: Feral Trees is a horror mystery one-shot comic by DC Comics, written by G. Willow Wilson and with art by Mike Perkins and Mike Spicer. The book is standalone, with allusions to Wilson's Poison Ivy (2022) and the broader Swamp Thing mythos. It was released on October 30, 2024.
People begin disappearing in the Crest Hill Woods outside Gotham City. Two very different beings empowered by The Green — Poison Ivy and Swamp Thing — work together to find out why the trees have gone wrong.
Tropes:
- Color-Coded Speech: Character-coded speech bubbles are used throughout: orange with black text for Swamp Thing, light green for Ivy, black with orange text for the Kettle Hole Devil, forest green for Jack in the Green, and so on.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Paula, the woman at the center of the event. She, has control over plants but was abused by her father for it. She goes to Gotham to strike out on her own, but falls into financial instability, drug addiction, and eventually homelessness. Paula eventually freezes to death, to Ivy's sorrow.
- Don't Go in the Woods: The trees in Crest Hill Woods have started murdering people. Both Ivy and Swamp Thing can tell that the forest is in pain and trying to protect something.
- Foil: The book's leads, Poison Ivy and Swamp Thing, both have control over plant life but are otherwise very different. In addition to their vastly different appearances, Swamp Thing points out that Poison Ivy is hasty and still clings to human life, while he and the other representatives from the Parliament of Trees are content to wait things out away from humanity.Ivy: That's it? You're not angry? The rich are cooking the planet while the poor freeze and starve — don't you want revenge?
Swamp Thing: Revenge? No, I do not want revenge. But the fact that you do says much about what you love most in the world. My brethren and I chose the forest. You chose the girl. - Magical Homeless Person: The murderous forest was caused by Paula, a homeless woman with control over plants. Having nowhere to sleep in the winter, she retreated into the forest and subconsciously caused it to lash out as she froze to death.
- Monster and the Maiden: The book features a team-up between the sultry vamp Poison Ivy and the hulking mass of swamp gunk that is Swamp Thing. The various covers focus on the physical contrast between them. Both have similar powers — Swamp Thing outclasses Ivy in raw Green Thumb abilities, while Ivy is better on her feet and more able to intuit the forest's feelings.
- Hedge Maze: Swamp Thing and Ivy find themselves in a blocky maze made of the forest's trees. Swamp Thing comments that it must have been made by a human as the forest would never do such a thing on its own.
- Teaser-Only Character: The man walking his dog in the opening makes it a few pages before being shanked by the feral trees. Cue the intro of the comic's actual protagonists, Ivy and Swamp Thing.
- Vine Tentacles: Poison Ivy is ensnared by the sentient forest's vines more than once.
- When Trees Attack: The local trees have started attacking people and trapping them with roots and vines. Eventually revealed to be the death throes of a dying woman with control over plants.
