Batman '61: The Clay's the Thing
James Gunn's DCU has greenlit a Clayface movie for 2026, and it's likely going to come out several years before we get a solo Batman movie. That's just wild to me. Like, I trust James Gunn and screenwriter Mike Flanagan, but it's wild for a b-list villain to be the first look at the Batman franchise. Anyway, we're looking at Detective Comics #298, which introduced a Clayface, but not the first Clayface. Welcome to the Gutters!
Clayface is actually a legacy villain, with at least six canonical Claysfays, and potentially as many as 11. For most people, the only two that counts are the silver age version, Matt Hagen, and the golden age version, Basil Karlo, introduced all the way back in Detective Comics #40, from 1940, appropriately enough.
Basil Karlo was a darker, less fantastical villain, one who wouldn't be out of place in a Dick Tracy comic. Karlo was a movie star who used his makeup skills to impersonate other actors and filmmakers and frame them for his murders, as well as wearing a mask made out of clay. He killed the actors working on a remake of one of his movies because he felt it was going to eclipse his older, silent movie.
It's wild to see a plot like this from the Golden Age of Hollywood. Like, "Actor turned serial killer murders the stars of a remake of one of his movies" could be the plot of a Scream sequel, and I'm not 100% sure that it hasn't. It's hilarious to me because over 250 issues later, Clayface himself is getting a slick new 60s remake. Hell, once they remembered Basil Karlo existed, they had him come back and murder the newer Clayfaces for being remakes!
The '61 Clayface is a career crook named Matt Hagen, who stumbles into a magic pool of clay that mutates him into a big clay monster with the ability to mold his body at will. Matt Hagen is not a smart man, more on that later, but he is a fast learner and able to master his powers remarkably quickly. He goes from being able to slowly turn back into a normal looking person to rapidly shifting between monster forms in mid-combat, all in less than a day.
To be fair, Batman and Robin are mostly used to fighting regular guys with like, weird guns, or some wind-up chattery teeth, or a bunch of question marks. Even if I had been trained by a secret ninja monastery, I would not know how to fight a dude made out of clay. I can't karate chop a Ray Harryhausen animation!
From that premise, we get a phenomenal supervillain story, as Batman and Robin have to figure out how to defeat Clayface, while Clayface has to figure out the strengths and limitations of his own powers. If they can't fight Clayface, they'll trap him. If Clayface gets trapped, he'll schlorp out through the keyhole. Clayface's powers apparently have a time limit, so he improvizes, overwhelming Batman with physical strength and disguising himself to evade detection. He pulls off two straight wins against the world's greatest detective basically through improvisation.
Clayface realizes that even his powers aren't invincible, so he hires goons from Gotham City's never-ending goon supply to run interference on him. However, Batman and Robin are able to deduce that Clayface's powers run out after an unknown period of time, at which point he'll be vulnerable. Batman and Robin use their 1960s CSI skills and are able to trace some physical evidence back to a known thug who works for Clayface, and they're able to interrupt his scheme.
During the fight, Robin is seemingly knocked unconscious while Clayface disappears, but Clayface had disguised himself as a tree and sneaks away while they're not looking. However, Robin was only feigning unconsciousness, seemingly without Batman even realizing, and follows Clayface back to his hideout in secret.
Now, through all of this, Matt Hagen has been very smart and creative and pragmatic about his clay powers and their limitations. However, at the very end, it's revealed that even though he knows well and good that there's a limit, he never bothered to find out how just how long that limit is.
And I'm just like.
Come on, man. You should be smarter than this. Just get a watch!
As luck would have it, Batman and Robin show up at his hideout just when the time limit is running out. He turns into some freaky chimera monster and tries to tear them to shreds, but alas, as soon as the clock strikes... forty-eight hours... he Cinderellas back into normal. At least he's smart enough not to reveal where he gets his magic clay from as he's taken away to jail.
This comic was just so close. There are different types of villains with different strengths and weaknesses, and their defeat has to naturally come from those weaknesses. If you have a villain who's strong, they shouldn't suddenly become weak; if you have a villain who's smart, they shouldn't suddenly become dumb, etc. Clayface was a villain who was smart, and then suddenly became dumb so that Batman could score a win.
There are other ways to score a win, and one of the most satisfying is to exploit the villain's psychology. The animated series famously had Batman defeat Clayface by playing on his psychological weaknesses. Matt Hagen had been combined with Basil Karlo, and he was an actor who was angry, vain, and prone to regressing into his previous roles. However, we're still dealing with a medium where the default is two or three shorter stories per issue. There still isn't the necessary length to develop characters with three-dimensional personalities that can lead to more satisfying confrontations.
Until next time!
