Batman: One Bad Day - Clayface #1

[cyberghostface]

 

"There's a monstrous turn to him -- that's what makes it a bad day. This isn't a decent day. That's a different story entirely. This is the day that Clayface gets close. He gets so close to learning the lesson and then ultimately is a villain. This is a tragedy, as all great Batman stories are wont to be. But watching as he struggles and fails, any time one of us has walked up to the brink and said, 'This line and no further.' Clayface steps over that line.

It's fascinating because the book cannot lose its empathy and our perspective on him, forcing the reader to really step into his muddy shoes and explore what it's like to be this guy, even as he's killing to still have the delusional self-confidence and self-worth to keep telling himself, 'This is good, this is right, this is what I deserve.' That was the magic trick that forced us to live in that toxic, self-delusional fantasy for a little bit, which was not entirely comfortable but very cathartic." -- Collin Kelly























Whenever something goes wrong, Basil kills the person in charge going to the director and then to the producer after the film is cancelled. The studio then moves forward with a Gray Ghost film (the studio is more interested in starting a franchise and their own 'universe').



Clayface is eventually exposed.

Comments

[blues32]

Basil, I'm not sure you're being honest on that whole, "I'm very open to feedback" thing.

And I love any mention of The Gray Ghost. I was never very fond of the episode, but the character left a clear mark on Bruce...and having Adam West do the voice was just icing on the cake.

[lbd_nytetrayn]

Basil, I'm not sure you're being honest on that whole, "I'm very open to feedback" thing.

I think he might be, now. I think he's desperate enough to be in order to escape his own personal Hell.

[blues32]

It seems to be self imposed.

[super_fly]

He'll *feed* on you, and come *back* in your form.

[bradygirl_12]

Hey, bub, Hollywood's a jungle! No news there. 😄

[phantomfo]

It's official. Alan Tudyk has ruined the voice of Clayface in my head. I can hear no other voice but his.

[blues32]

Hm. I hear Ron Perlman. Though that was Matt Hagen, not Basil Karlo.

[lbd_nytetrayn]

I know, right? XD

[super_fly]

I was going to say, if he kept up that rate he was going to end up having to impersonate the entire cast and crew at once.

[trooper924]

You know, that'd be a cool story. Batman tracks down Clayface to a film set and tries to figure out who amongst the crew he's impersonating--only to discover that everyone there is actually Clayface split into multiple people at the same time.

[numeronone]

Believe it or not, I was going to propose something similar - but with a John Carpenter's The Thing or Animal Farm type twist where not even Karlo remembers which people are him and which aren't. There's a lot of potential there for examining how homogenised film culture tends to be - not just in the types of films that are made, but in the types of people who tend to be most often in the spotlight, the types of stories that get told, the constant defaulting to lazy tropes and stereotypes.

Hell, people are only just waking up to talking about the idea of cultural appropriation! Wouldn't Clayface be ripe with potential to explore the idea that taking a superficial reading of someone else's appearance/role/character and exploiting it for your own gain - especially when you started out as a mediocre white man - is inherently immoral?

I found Colin Kelly's actually-published story wanting. It wants to make a point about art and consumerism, about how movies these days have to be franchisable IP to be successful - but any statement it makes about it is blunted by the fact that the guy fighting for "true art" is a big lump of mud who impulsively suffocates people who get in his way, and needs Batman to swing in at the last possible second to remind him that Murder Is Bad. It wants Karlo to be as relatably tragic and not-meant-for-this-world as Quasimodo and simultaneously as thoughtlessly brutal as the henchmen in some generic action movie.

It wants to have its' clay and eat it.