The Last of Us’ Cordyceps nightmare is already at work in Batman comics

polygon.com:

Are you one of the many folks who’ve only just been introduced to Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, the real-life parasitic fungus that takes over the nervous system of ants, through The Last Of Us’ HBO adaptation? Regardless of whether you’ve caught the Cordyceps bug recently or not, can I interest you in one of the smartest things some comics creators have done lately? Poison Ivy has Cordyceps powers now.

Writer G. Willow Wilson and artist Marcio Takara’s Poison Ivy miniseries leapt onto shelves last summer, seeing Pamela Isley self-infecting with (the fictional strain) Ophiocordyceps lamia, in a murder-suicide plan to take down the human race. Wilson and Takara put the venerable villain through a six-issue cross-country road trip from despair to new self-actualization that’s the best Ivy story in just about forever.

What else is happening in the pages of our favorite comics? We’ll tell you. Welcome to Monday Funnies, Polygon’s weekly list of the books that our comics editor enjoyed this past week. It’s part society pages of superhero lives, part reading recommendations, part “look at this cool art.” There may be some spoilers. There may not be enough context. But there will be great comics. (And if you missed the last edition, read this.)

In a certain sense, the first domino to fall was Harley Quinn — seen here enjoying just a sip of Ivy’s hallucinogenic spores. (Spending all day literally high off of your girlfriend? PEAK lesbian culture.)

If Harley’s gonna be a character we root for — and it’s too late to take that back at this point — she’s gotta stop doing indiscriminate murder. But if she’s gonna be the committed partner a full-blown supercriminal, well, that’s tricky, isn’t it? The moment the Harley Quinn animated