{"id":82,"date":"2022-11-20T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-11-20T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/?p=82"},"modified":"2026-09-27T15:26:40","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T18:26:40","slug":"super-villain-yearbook-clayface-1940","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/?p=82","title":{"rendered":"SUPER-VILLAIN YEARBOOK: CLAYFACE 1940"},"content":{"rendered":"

What did Clayface get up to in 1940?<\/p>\n

Detective Comics v1 040, ‘Untitled’ **First Appearance**<\/p>\n

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I’m not surprising anyone when I reveal that Clayface is actually Basil Karlo, an oldtime horror movie star who tanked his own career and couldn’t take it when they started remaking his old movies, thus necessitating a costumed murder spree to ruin the filming of Dread Castle.<\/i><\/p>\n

Batman and Robin get involved because one of the prospective victims is Julie Madison, Bruce Wayne’s fianc\u00e9 (in her last appearance as<\/i> his fianc\u00e9). Much of the action is not, in fact, Clayface-related but rather concerned with the actions of various Clayface suspects such as drunk director Ned Norton, variously-gruntled actors Kenneth Todd and Fred Walker, and Gangster Roxy Brenner.<\/p>\n

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Clayface himself wears the common purple hat and cloak combo of an early Batman villain. He doesn’t actually spend much time on-panel, so the degree of grotesqueness of his makeup is hard to judge, whatever the narration boxes say.<\/p>\n

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And finally the reveal: Basil Karlo did it and he did it because of horror movies. He might just be the first character in comics to get the Don Quixote “the problematic media of the day is the real<\/i> villain!” origin for his madness but he certainly won’t be the last.<\/p>\n

Number of Episodes of the “Super-Villains of Hollywood” podcast:<\/b> Basil’s got to be an entire season all by himself, doesn’t he? If we’re dealing strictly with the events of the year 1940 we’re talking two episodes on his rise and fall, followed by one about the actual Clayface debut.<\/p>\n

Body Count:<\/b> 2<\/p>\n

End-of-year Status:<\/b> Captured<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What did Clayface get up to in 1940? Detective Comics v1 040, ‘Untitled’ **First Appearance** I’m not surprising anyone when I reveal that Clayface is actually Basil Karlo, an oldtime horror movie star who tanked his own career and couldn’t take it when they started remaking his old movies, thus necessitating a costumed murder spree […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":83,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,60,83,17,80,81,82,20,64,84,79,62,85],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-5","category-batman","category-clayface","category-dc-comics","category-detective-comics","category-homicidal-maniac","category-mad-art","category-murderer","category-robin","category-super-villain","category-trend-based","category-villains-of-hollywood","category-yearbook"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=82"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82\/revisions\/84"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/83"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=82"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=82"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=82"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}