Detective Comics v1 049, ‘Clayface Walks Again!’
Clayface’s 1941 adventure starts with two asylum guards learning a very important lesson a bit too late: if you exist in a fictional setting, never transport a homicidal maniac in a storm. It’s as true in a 1941 comic book as it was in any of the Halloween movies.
Sadly, they remain unaware of the laws of narrative causality right un until their demise while Basil “Clayface” Karlo, protected by those same laws, escapes into the night to kill a man for theatrical makeup.
We are finally treated to a clear look at the Clayface mask and it’s appropriately horrible.
Since it’s his second outing, there’s no need for the mystery element of the story, which ends up making this a far less bloody yarn than the last one: Clayface sets out to burn down his former movie studio but since this is a very predictable thing for him to do he is interrupted by Batman and Robin. He does almost manage to kill the two of them, but they get out of it as you might have guessed.
From here on Clayface focusses his efforts on Julie Madison, as-of-this-issue former fiancé of Bruce Wayne and newly famous actress rebranded as “Portia Storme” to fulfil the whims of 1940s Hollywood. It’s never spelled out so his motivation is equally likely to be that she escaped him on his last murder spree as it is that her death would prove most harmful to the studio.
Clayface is eventually reapprehended after a complicated slight-of hand trick that substitutes Robin for Portia and relies on him using only piercing weapons to the torso. It pays off, so who am I to quibble or suggest that Portia simply wear the life preserver from the start?
That’s it for Clayface for about thirty years!
Number of Episodes of the “Super-Villains of Hollywood” podcast: Just one episode for 1941, I’m afraid. It’s an eventful time but not enough to sustain more than an hour and half of podcasting.
Body Count: 1
End-of-year Status: Captured
