Looking for the real dirt on your favorite costume-clad celebs? You’re in the right place, as the always informed Splash Pannell keeps us on top of the fights, flings and latest DCU gossip in this sensationally savage column.
 

Hey, is this going through? Whew, finally. Splash Pannell here, your favorite metafictional, semi-canonical reporter with the monthly download on the juiciest goings on in the place we call the DC Universe. (Why do we call it that? I dunno. I think it has to do with Detective Chimp.) As such, though, we call this column the DC Dish, which is now suddenly making me wonder about Detective Chimp’s dinnerware.

Enough of that, let’s get to why you’re all here.
 

GREEN AGE WASTELAND

Well, they finally did it. After months of their threats and my excuses, DC.com finally shipped me out to Gotham City in the middle of an "event." You might have heard of this in the weekly trades from Gotham as the "Bad Seeds" affair, but here in G-Town, locals are calling it "The Greening." We've got a difference of opinion in local municipal politics between duly elected mayor and former Arkham inmate Poison Ivy and allegedly Court of Owls-appointed police commissioner and immortal caveman Vandal Savage. Mainly that Ivy has sold out the whole city to the Parliament of Trees, while Savage prefers a more fascist, authoritarian vibe. Naturally, they've decided to make it everybody's problem.

You probably know the drill from the last few times Ivy's lost it on a city-wide scale. Vines and wood elementals everywhere, deadly spores in the air, the whole mishegas. (The worst part is the way these spores are messing with all the electronics here—it's a miracle I'm getting this column through to you right now.) In response, Savage has filled a couple of GCPD blimps full of a powerful herbicide which should take out Ivy and, if we're lucky, only 100,000 Gothamites or so. What's Batman doing about it, you ask? Last I heard, playing couples counselor to a troubled Dr. and Mrs. Fries in their frozen bungalow below Gotham City. Best of luck to that marriage on the rocks.

The other Bats are more or less pulling their weight, from what I've been able to gather here. Nightwing and Robin managed to stop a disgruntled construction worker from blowing up Arkham Towers in all the chaos. Gotham's daytime shifter Signal and the Batgirls have been looking after civilians caught in the crossfire. Even Batwoman's back in town fresh off her murder charges in Petalon, dismembering men as she goes, if the rumors can be believed. And all while they still have big bounties on their heads posted by Savage himself.

Now, I'm not in the local politics game, but considering how we got out of the last couple times Ivy went big mad, you'd think the solution would be a tactically applied puppy dog eye from one Harley Quinn. Well, the girl's on her way, but last I saw, she was getting her bounty claimed by cold war leftover NKVDemon. Let's just keep our fingers crossed that not too many die before true love wins the day.

(For more, you can see the night from green hell unfold through the Batman: Bad Seeds event across all the Gotham-based comics and a few special tie-ins. New local independent paper the Gotham Balladeer has provided a helpful guide above.)
 

THE RETURN...OF STEVE

Believe it or not, the world continues to turn outside of the Ivy-covered Gotham. In society news, the world's most eligible grieving bachelorette is back off the market, as Wonder Woman's longtime beau and claybaby daddy Steve Trevor returns from the dead—all thanks to a trip the wrong way down the River Styx with her own time-traveling daughter Trinity. I'm hearing that a pack of corgis were somehow involved, but that may just be my bad connection. (You can double check yourself in the pages of Wonder Woman.)
 

GLPANDEMONIUM

Speaking of clay, over in Hollywood, another old Batman foe is in the middle of his own controversy. Starlets and ingenues in the orbit of comeback actor and former Clayface Basil Karlo have been continuously disappearing, though Karlo's representation has so far provided airtight alibis for each of these incidents. Considering the wealth of Clayfaces we've seen in the past, there are plenty of suspects to go around...and, it seems, many more coming. A class action lawsuit is being built against the manufacturers of the viral weight loss and muscle building supplement Losilmix, which is now being alleged as the product of tampering with Clayface DNA. The supplement's creator, Dr. Victoria October, was unavailable to us for comment. You know, me being trapped in an URBAN JUNGLE WAR ZONE and all. (But you can find out more in Clayface: Celebrity Dirt.)
 

TITAN FALL

One Bat-Kid we're not seeing anywhere in Gotham? Prodigal bad boy of Batman's Robins, Red Hood. He and his new team calling themselves the "Teen Titans"—without a single thought to how much more confusing and difficult my job gets when there are two different groups operating under the same name—are still causing trouble in Seattle. This time they’re breaking and entering into the Ascend wellness center for troubled youths. We can confirm some of the identities of this group of ne'er-do-wells as Cheshire Cat, Fairplay, Proxy and Wildcard. They're also allegedly active and recruiting in the DC Official Discord, so keep your kids safe. And if you are a kid, don't trust anything you read from a metafictional stranger. (Stay in the know by reading Teen Titans.)
 

GOLDEN EYE

Finally, we've got a mixed bag of news this week for the Superman Family, and good news for those of you out there suffering from a different kind of green sickness throughout the world. Daily Planet reports are coming in that the recently eye-deprived Superman has regrown his missing organs following one last transformation into his "Golden Superman" form, speeding around the world in the process to round up all the El Caldero Kryptonite reserves that had been poisoning everybody the past couple of months. (See how it all ends well—more or less—in the final issues of the “Kingdom of Zod” crossover.)

Superman's cousin Supergirl, on the other hand, seems to be all but okay. Just as the Super-Fam had sent the Kingdom of Zod packing, a gold kryptonite-wielding Reactron has exposed himself to the Maid of Might, permanently robbing her of her powers. What does this mean for the no longer Supergirl's future? What are you asking me for? I'm not Madame Xanadu. (But you might stay a step ahead of me by following up on Supergirl.)

I can tell the signal's breaking from all the spore content in the air, so that's all from me for now—at least until I can find a way out of Gotham. Somebody better get me an award for this. I'm not seeing Vicki Vale out here.
 

Splash Pannell was last seen trying to ride out the Greening in the VIP section at the Iceberg Lounge. The bouncer did not believe they were on the list under the name ‘Alex Jaffe.’

NOTE: The views and opinions expressed in this feature are solely those of Splash Pannell and do not necessarily reflect those of DC, Warner Bros. or Skydance, nor should they be read as confirmation or denial of future DC plans.