"Stories that make you go awwww!" - Gotham Adventures #30

[icon_uk]

One of the most memorable of the many memorable aspects of the Batman Animated Universe was the way it dealt with it's villains.

Yes some were monsters in every sense of the word, but nearly all of them had, at their core, a human nature, a human frailty which had pushed them beyond the pale (often, but not always, a dark reflection of some aspect of Batman's own psyche).

Be it Mr Freeze's genuine love for his wife becoming an obsession to isolate himself from emotion, or Baby Doll being an adult woman forever trapped by genetics in the body of a child, or the Mad Hatter finding himself unable to interact with the woman he loves (or at least desires) because he's cripplingly shy.... That doesn't excuse their actions of course, but it does give them something for a viewer to relate to at some level and that was a powerful thing in the hands of skilled writers (and the comics reflected that too, to their eternal credit).


In the DCAU, Clayface was originally Matt Hagen, who had been a big screen movie actor of some note, and along with that, he'd had movie star good looks, he was a vain man, a selfish man, not a NICE man certainly but not really evil. At the very least he'd be used to being the most handsome man in the room. Imagine what becoming Clayface would have meant to him, he'd lost his career, but also his LOOKS. Yes, he could get them back briefly, or become anyone else he chose, but it was always a short term thing, he'd always revert to his new Clayface appearance.

This story opens with a fairly long sequence which we can skip. Tommy McKee, a ten year boy, has gone missing from a hospital at Fort Kisco, it's a government run facility, which means that those in charge are worried that whoever took him might be working for a foreign power. When Batman asks why someone would keep a ten year old in a Government facility, Gordon hands him a file, we don't see it, but Batman just gapes in shock.

He investigates and discovers that yes the boy was removed from the facility, but not by a foreign power, but by his parents. A doctor working at the facility explains that the kid had been kept there for far too long, with no change in his condition, and he, and the parents were starting to think that the authorities didn't WANT him to get better and had arranged for him to be smuggled out.

Batman tracks the parents down to a holistic healing centre. They're ordinary people, who are desperate, as any parent worth the name would be, for SOMETHING to help their child. They introduce Batman to Tommy, but again, we don't see actually him.

We cut to Arkham, where Batman now arranges to see Clayface, he wants Hagen to come with him, but won't say why. Hagen, curious more than anything, agrees to go.



Thankfully, this is great for my page count limits because it leads to a whole long fight scene we don't need, and which I think was only ever meant as filler.

Batman takes Hagen to STAR Labs in Gotham, and as soon as there is a distraction Hagen makes his move...



But as soon as he tries to move away, leaving Batman pinned to the wall, his feet, then his legs, then his whole body start to freeze solid. Batman free's himself and the head of STAR Labs explains...



Love that moment.... even Clayface is shocked, and asks what the cause is. The Doctor explains that no one knows, but for some reason Tommy is suffering a unique form of cellular breakdown.



Ouch! (And I like that Hagen doesn't initially turn the request down out of malice, but out of worry that he would fail)

And so....





If that didn't make you go "Awww!" just a little...

And soon..



Hagen suggests that his new price for teaching Tommy how do that would be a clean slate, all charges dropped against him and he walks out of Arkham a free man. But he is unaware that Tommy has just walked in.





Another "Awwww!" moment methinks...

Eventually, Tommy learns what he needs to survive (and is not, AFAIK, ever heard from again) and Hagen returns, of his own volition, to Arkham...



Sadly Hagen notes... "No reason... No reason at all."

Comments

[jaysonbyron]

Oh man--that panel--holding the truck.

My feels just guy a swift punch in the gut. I'll, uh, be over here, getting this DUST out of my EYES.

[sir_mikael]

I think that page ending with that panel is a great way to show how storytelling done through sequential art can do some things other mediums can't. It hits you out of nowhere and you can tell the emotions both from the drawings of the figures and the way it's framed. The absence of words or music only hightens it. You can read so much into that panel.

[wake_the_dragon]

or Baby Doll being an adult woman forever trapped by genetics in the body of a child,

Oh, that episode. It's one of the few episodes of Batman: The Animated Series I can't ever watch without crying.

Anyway, I really enjoyed this comic. I always like it when one of the villians actaully does something nice for once. (Like in the Justice League episode, "Comfort and Joy".)

[silverhammerman]

Really nice. I like this, I like the idea of Clayface being a little human, it's always struck me as weird that he's so often treated as just a generic bruiser.
Also, that kid would totally have been perfect for Batman Beyond. Too bad he only appeared in the comic.

[janegray]

This was such a fantastic story, I loved it :)

[freddylloyd]

Ditto.

[sir_mikael]

Awwww! :)

[kurenai_tenka]

D= That was incredibly sweet, yes. <3

[blunderbuss]

I loved this issue. It's why I always liked the DCAU Batman; they humanize their villians into actual people. Not NICE people, sure, but still people with their own motivations and motives.

[kingofmadcows]

"Feat of Clay" is a really underrated two-parter. Not only does it make Clayface a much more sympathetic villain, there's some really interesting subtext about addiction. Hagen agreed to use the experimental RenuYou drug because he was addicted to his fame only to later discover that RenuYou itself is highly addictive and causes severe withdrawal. The emotional pain of losing his good looks becomes physical pain due to his addiction to the drug.

[icon_uk]

Whilst I agree with your points, I'm not sure I'd call "Feat Of Clay" under-rated, it's usually high on the "favourite story" lists and is considered to have some of the most impressive animation the show ever had, pretty much because Clayface was seen as something akin to a personal challenge by the animation studio who went all out on it.

[kingofmadcows]

But people don't really think of Clayface as being as tragic a character as Mr. Freeze or Baby Doll. Plus whenever people talk about the episode, they never talk about addiction. Matt Hagen does act like a big jerk all the time, treating his friend like crap, and people attribute that to who Matt Hagen is. However, the episode does mention the harmful side effects of the RenuYou quite a bit. So you have to wonder how much of Hagen's willingness to do bad things and eventual turn towards evil was because of his desperation and how much was due to the effects RenuYou had on his brain.

[tigerkaya]

This was really good and quite a coincidence too. I've been writing up this story of Hagan joint Mysterio's gang in Metropolis down in HRS. Can't wait to buy this online, thanks for this!

[icon_uk]

Happy to help! :)