Clayface tries to tap into the success of body horror but can’t reach the genre’s gory depths

By Matt Jacobsen, Senior Lecturer in Film History in the School of Society and Environment, Queen Mary University of London

Several characters have worn the mantle of the villain Clayface in DC comics across eight decades – but the two most prominent must surely be Basil Karlo and Matt Hagen.

Karlo, the first Clayface, who debuted in June 1940, was a B-movie actor who had no superpowers but did have a thirst for blood and a penchant for crime. In the 1950s Batman adventures, Clayface reappeared in the shape of Matt Hagen, a treasure hunter whose accidental encounter with radioactive material gave him the power to transform into a lumbering mass of muddy goo with superhuman strength and the ability to shapeshift…

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