Where Every Scroll is a New Adventure
There's another Worm connection in No Man's Land with Poison Ivy. As the rest of Batman's rogues' gallery carve up Gotham, she ends staking out a derelict city park and caring for a bunch of kids who were orphaned or otherwise abandoned after the earthquake. Rather than rousting her out, Batman agrees to leave her alone for the time being, provided she uses her powers to generate produce for the rest of the surviving citizens to eat. While Ivy was less than pleased about having to go along with this, she still held up her end of the deal.
In his own discussion of Ivy's history on Twitter, Exalted_Speed has argued that No Man's Land is really where the interpretation of Ivy as an antihero (ahem) took root. The connection with Worm is obvious; however, Taylor's tenure as urban warlord feels like a more refined version of that concept. As noted in the thread, the attempts to turn Poison Ivy into an antihero often stumble on both the sheer amount of carnage she's caused over the years and on with her original characterization of "vicious plant-themed Catwoman" which is still a major element in her modern portrayals. By contrast, it's much easier to offer apologetics of Taylor's conduct on the Boardwalk, since she was explicitly written to fit the role that Pamela Isely was awkwardly retrofitted to play.
Got a Worm meta question for you. I'm starting on the early parts of Taylor's warlord era - I'm about to leap into Arc 13 - and the general concept of a ravaged American city being divided up by various supervillain groups is reminding me a lot of that Batman story arc No Man's Land from the late 1990s. Unfortunately my comics knowledge is rudimentary at best, and I haven't been able to any discussion comparing the two stories, so I was wondering if I could pick your brain on the subject. Was it just convergent evolution, or was Wildbow engaging with the Batman story in some way?
I myself have only read about half of No Man's Land- and several years ago to boot- so I've got limited ability to do a direct compare and contrast. No Man's Land is absolutely the sort of status-quo-shattering, history-book-making upset that, within Marvel and DC, nonetheless always inexplicably heals and loses salience until you can barely tell that it's still in continuity. Worm is heavily informed by Wildbow's irritation with that sort of thing, so I think it's totally reasonable to view the warlord era through the lens of "What if No Mans Land had no editorial escape hatch." Alternatively, I think it kind of makes sense to view it through the lens that it's working backwards from the premise of No Man's Land- In what kind of setting would it be plausible for the Federal Government to write off a sufficiently-damaged American City? In what context would the legal infrastructure have been established for that, in what context would that even fall within the Overton Window? What muddies my opinion on this is that the general concept of a ravaged, atmospherically-apocalyptic American city torn up by superpowered gang warfare is something that's kind of just been in the water in superhero comics since the mid-eighties at least, and it was a relatively common thing to see during the Dark Age- they were choice prey for all those overpouched musclemen with their poorly rendered firearms. I'd be surprised if Wildbow wasn't at least aware of No Man's Land, but it's definitely not the only cape book from the late 90s or early oughts where you could pick up that idea from. Ultimately this leaves me unsure if No Man's Land is the specific referent or if it's just part-and-parcel with trying to do an involved, thoughtful take on what cape comics were like at the time.