CREATURE COMMANDOS Episode 5 Introduced Us To the Clayface of the DCU

In Creature Commandos, Task Force M’s head honcho Amanda Waller receives professional advice from an expert in Themyscira named Professor MacPherson. She convinces them that Circe’s proclamations of Princess Ilana’s plans to conquer the world are, in fact, all true. But in episode five, Rick Flag and Eric Frankenstein discover that the professor is actually Clayface in disguise. Flag recognizes Clayface as a known super villain. The pair gets into a huge fight with Clayface (voiced by Alan Tudyk, who also voices him on Harley Quinn). This fight leaves Clayface (and Flag) a little worse for wear. The episode never actually reveals which version of Clayface they fought, leaving many possibilities.

The Many Clayfaces of DC Comics

The first Clayface in the pages of DC Comics was Basil Karlo. He was a Hollywood actor who used the name of his horror film character and became a serial killer. In the sci-fi Silver Age of the ’60s, DC introduced another Clayface as a Batman foe, Matt Hagen. He was a treasure hunter who gained shapeshifting abilities from a radioactive pool. A third Clayface, Preston Payne, later appeared in the Bronze Age, in a 1978 issue of Detective Comics. He gained his powers by using the DNA of Hagen.

A variety of other characters with similar powers all used the name and look of Clayface since, although mostly for brief periods. Among them were Cassius “Clay” Payne, Peter Malley, Todd Russell, and Sondra Fuller, the only female Clayface. Their powers all differed somewhat, but almost all of them could only change into something (or someone) else for brief periods. They almost always reverted to a muddy, clay being as their default form. The character gained the most fame when they combined Basil Karlo with Matt Hagen for the seminal Batman: The Animated Series in 1992.

Batman: The Animated Series Introduced the Most Iconic Clayface

In the B:TAS episode “Feat of Clay,” the series producers reimagined Matt Hagen as a Hollywood actor, not an adventurer, much like Basil Karlo. However, his power set was definitely like Hagen’s in the comics. He turned into a hulking blob of clay, and that visualization is what the comics eventually adopted. Various media since Batman: The Animated Series has used different people using the name Clayface. However, the look they invented for the character has stuck around, from Batman: Brave and the Bold to Harley Quinn. Only the recent Batman: Caped Crusader went back to the original Basil Karlo iteration for their period piece series.

Creature Commandos‘ Clayface Hints Toward His DCU Future

So who is the Clayface we meet in Creature Commandos? He’s definitely visually inspired by the Matt Hagen version from B:TAS. But they never say his civilian name, likely on purpose. He could be Hagen, Karlo, or even one of the less famous ones. He’s possibly Johnny Williams, the former firefighter Clayface of the early 2000s. He was a little more crass, like the Clayface in Creature Commandos. It’s impossible to say for certainty if this is the one who will star in a solo film. This version is a cold-blooded murderer, not a tragic figure. However, if “it’s all connected” in this new DCU, even if they are not the same literal person, his appearance is likely giving us our first look into what the live-action DCU Clayface looks like. We’re just excited to see what the future of this iconic villain is in the DCU.