Warning: contains spoilers for Avengers: Curse of the Man-Thing #1!
The Avengers are currently in the fight of their lives against Marvel Comics' version of Poison Ivy, but Harrower is quickly proving she's a far deadlier villain than the plant-obsessed eco-terrorist Batman has faced so many times before.
The Man-Thing, a creature grown out of an obsessed man’s search for the super soldier serum and one very nasty car crash straight into a swamp, is dead. His skin was stripped from his body by Marvel’s newest deadly villain, the Harrower, who is using a combination of magic and science to try and wipe out humanity. The resulting plant spires Harrower has grown from Man-Thing's flesh are the Avengers’ big new problem, especially because their spores have retained Man-Thing's ability to set fire to anything that feels fear. The spores released from the plants aren’t pollinating so much as they are literally burning citizens to a crisp.
In Avengers: Curse of the Man Thing #1 by Steve Orlando and Franceso Mobili, Marvel’s all-star team of superheroes have their own version of Poison Ivy to deal with. The Harrower, formerly known by her family as Harriet, has severed her connections to the science-minded eco-terrorists, Hordeculture, to wage her personal war against humanity. Though dangerous opponents of the X-Men, even Hordeculture aren't extreme enough for the newest plant-focused villain, who wants to wipe out humans due to their environmentally destructive behavior. Breaking ties with the elder villains, she declares of humankind, “I can wipe them off the board! After a few billion years of natural selection another species gets a shot at the top!”
With rising sea levels, ice caps melting, sinking cities, leaking pipelines, non-potable water, hurricanes, dying species, burning rainforests, climate change, and the growing dread that maybe we’re too late to do anything about any of it, it’s easy to sympathize with characters like Poison Ivy. Harrower’s plans, however, are a bit harder to get behind. While Poison Ivy may feed a man or two to a giant Venus flytrap, Harrower's methods are more horrifying, and rather than starting out by targeting polluting companies or threatening the human race to do better, Harrower has jumped right to worldwide genocide.
In comparison to the DC villain, Harrower seems to have bigger plans and even less regard for human life. With a lifetime of education when it comes to eco-terrorism, magic enough to kill the Man-Thing with ease, and the ability and intelligence to execute a worldwide attack at will, it’s easy to see Harrower is a bigger, badder version of Poison Ivy. And with a plan designed to prey on the exact fear she's helping create, it seems like the Avengers will be stretched to their limits in their mission to stop her.