This week, every corner of Gotham City will be caught in the crossfire of “Bad Seeds”—a war for control of Gotham between unlikely rivals Poison Ivy and Vandal Savage, with Batman, his family and the Gotham citizens all caught in the middle. The catch? They’re not waging battle in their typical supervillain personas. Rather, they’re acting in opposing capacities as city officials: Poison Ivy as the city’s newly elected mayor, and Vandal Savage as acting commissioner of the Gotham City Police Department.

If that’s surprising to you…we understand. What we’re seeing here is the culmination of many years of storylines in Batman comics, which we’ll do our best to catch you up on. Here’s everything you need to know about the rise to local municipal power of ecoterrorist Poison Ivy and immortal caveman Vandal Savage before the Bad Seeds begin to sprout.

To take you back to the beginning, everything that’s happening now started six years ago…with a man we call the Joker.
 

JOKER WAR

Batman’s recent showdown with a locked-up Joker in Arkham wasn’t the first time our Clown Prince revealed he knew Batman’s true identity. The first revelation that the Joker knew who Batman really was came in 2015’s Batman: Endgame, but a mindwiping dip in a pool of raw dionesium plausibly wiped that information from his mind. While still remaining fairly ambiguous, that erasure was called into question with 2020’s Joker War, when the Joker came directly after Bruce Wayne’s finances—manipulating Catwoman and employing an underworld figure known as the Underbroker to bring all assets of the Wayne fortune under his control. While the Joker was ultimately defeated, Bruce ended up using much of his fortune to pay for a new incarnation of Batman Incorporated, and the majority of the remainder was left in the care of Lucius Fox. Meanwhile, Bruce moved into a brownstone building in the city to be closer to the home that mattered to him—and, later, to another equally elegant manor in the city named Pennyworth Manor for his departed butler and father figure.

Going just a little further back, 2019’s Year of the Villain event included a plot by the Batman Who Laughs, a Batman corrupted by the Joker in a dark alternate universe, infecting agents throughout the main universe to act as his pawns—including Commissioner Gordon. Gordon was left so rattled by the experience that he gave up his position as Commissioner. During the period of the Joker War, Gordon was succeeded by Harvey Bullock, who was later in turn relieved by Renee Montoya, who struggled to keep the peace with the newly elected Mayor Nakano’s hardline anti-vigilante position. Although uncomfortable returning to the police force she once left behind, Montoya believed for a time that she might do more good as a leader than she could as a detective. Sadly, she would have no such luck, learning soon that her position was subject to an authority she couldn’t even see coming.
 

VANDAL SAVAGE AND THE COURT OF OWLS

That brings us to the Gotham City of Chip Zdarsky’s tenure on the main Batman title from 2022 to 2025, which gave us the rise and captivity of Vandal Savage, enemy to the Justice Society and Justice League alike. At this time, while Batman contended with the likes of his emergency robot Failsafe, his own backup personality of Zur-En-Arrh, a multiverse of Jokers, and yet another crime war with Catwoman, Savage moved into Gotham City for then unknown purposes, using his own fortunes to buy out the vacant Wayne Manor for himself. There, the immortal conqueror entertained an alliance with the Court of Owls, who sought to put him into a position of power in the city left weakened since Gordon’s retirement. After all, who better sets the tone of the city’s relationship with Batman than the commissioner of the police?

What we’d soon learn after Savage’s next few encounters with Batman in Gotham was that he was anticipating the arrival of the dionesium comet that originally gave him his powers tens of thousands of years ago, theoretically strengthening his powers to true immortality should he intercept it. What ultimately happened was that the crash site did change the nature of his immortality in that it would only stay intact as long as he remained in the confines of Gotham. Now, Savage was truly determined to make his mark in Gotham and complete his mission of making the Batman who ruined his chance at true immortality as miserable as possible.

So, if you’re wondering why an immortal despot is mucking about in local Gotham politics, the answer is that right now he has nowhere else to go. And as long as he’s here, he might as well spite Batman.
 

THE GREEN PARTY

That brings us to Poison Ivy, who, despite being over 40 issues into her own ongoing series, is a little easier to explain here, as her recent political ascension occurred pretty quickly. Over the past few years as a solo act, Ivy has attempted to eradicate humanity with a fungal plague, experienced a change of heart, battled multiple unlike-minded plant elementals and even unwillingly inherited a cult in the “Order of the Green Knight,” where she picked up some unlikely leadership experience. Through it all, she’s experienced ups and downs with her longtime beau Harley Quinn and her perennially psychosexually stymied companion, the once buttoned-up “Janet from HR.”

That all came to a head with Poison Ivy #40, as Ivy’s traveling days brought her back home to Gotham and into Vandal Savage’s office after committing her usual slate of ecologically motivated crimes. Savage’s offer was straightforward: instead of working against the city, work for the city—under the care of his tech czar, AI mogul Marie Henley. Henley’s mission, ostensibly, was to make the city a greener place, utilizing the algorithm to do so in the most efficient way possible. It took less than a day before Ivy sussed Henley out for the anti-human, anti-ecology parasite she was and killed her on the spot, in the street, swiftly, decisively and brutally, feeding the earth with the blood of a billionaire. The whole thing was caught on camera.

Now, jumping back for a moment, at the end of Zdarsky’s Batman run, the popular Mayor Nakano was assassinated by the Court of Owls, leaving the mayor’s seat vacant to the relatively weak Mayor Horgan. And as it happens, this very public killing of a very unpopular tech billionaire, coupled with a very fortunate acquittal, all resulted in Poison Ivy becoming more popular with the people than ever before. It was all a case of fortuitous timing that allowed Ivy to ride that publicity all the way to Gotham City’s highest office. Which now—again, ostensibly—made her Vandal Savage’s boss.

Immediately locking horns in both Poison Ivy and Matt Fraction’s ongoing Batman, Ivy and Savage momentarily put their differences aside to get Batman out of the way for the battle they both knew they were about to wage on each other. Together they cleared out many of Batman’s safehouses across the city and even got one of his most crucial allies, Barbara Gordon, imprisoned for collusion. (For her part, Barbara insists she was taken in on purpose, and this is all part of the plan to take them both down—a plan you can follow in the ongoing Barbara Gordon: Breakout.)

In retaliation, Damian Wayne acted on his own to blow up Wayne Manor, preferring to sacrifice it entirely rather than let it sit in Savage’s control for another moment. Which all brings us to right now. Savage is hopping mad over the incessant interference of the Bat-Family and his inability to do anything at the moment but strike back. Ivy herself is going through her own breakdown after burning her relationship with Harley Quinn so she could focus on doing some good in her unlikely political career. And all of it is about to come crashing down as their true natures reveal themselves while both are in the best position possible to cause the most chaos in Gotham City.

Maybe you can’t do it on the GCPD roof anymore, but you better find somewhere to light that Bat-Signal. The sky’s about to get dark.
 

“Bad Seeds” kicks off today with a special prelude in Poison Ivy #47 by G. Willow Wilson, Leandro Fernandez and Arif Prianto. Then dive into the first chapter in Batman: Bad Seeds – Sunset #1 by Matt Fraction, G. Willow Wilson, Giuseppe Camuncoli, Cliff Rathburn and Tomeu Morey.

Alex Jaffe is the author of our monthly "Ask the Question" column and writes about TV, movies, comics and superhero history for DC.com. Follow him on Bluesky at @AlexJaffe and find him in the DC Official Discord server as HubCityQuestion.