Batman: TAS, episode #4: Feat of Clay, part 1

One of the most exciting opening moments in Feat of Clay is when the credits are shown. Story by Marv Wolfman (and Michael Reaves.) Teleplay by Marv Wolfman. Marv Wolfman! For anyone familiar with the comics world, that's a name numbered among royalty. He was a central figure in Marvel's horror comics explosion in the early 70s, after the Comics Code was neutered to the point of irrelevance; creating or co-creating many characters, including such Hollywood notables as Blade. He eventually became editor of their black-and-white line and also editor-in-chief of the whole studio and continued writing throughout his tenure there. When he moved to DC, he co-created The New Teen Titans with George Perez (one of DC's best titles in the 80s) and also Crisis on Infinite Earths, the first attempt at remaking DC's hackneyed history into something coherent and at least mildly intelligent (which was, of course, resisted by much of the old guard.) He also tried his hand at Superman and several other projects (a personal favorite was the revival of Dial 'H' for Hero with Carmine Infantino) and, of course, The Batman. Marv Wolfman! Here's someone who would really understand the nature and pacing of the character, right? Here's someone who could demonstrate just how similar comics and animation can be, right? Right?

Well... Let me preface this by saying that Marv is a great writer and there are many other hands in the pot of making a cartoon, just as there are a comic. Among them are animators, directors, and producers. So I think the plot of Feat of Clay is spot on for the nature of the series. This is a story about corporate subterfuge, already an established theme, but also about multiple kinds of betrayal, double-dealing, vanity, and what happens when you get in over your head. That screams "noir" from the rooftops, which means it's right in line with what the series has already demonstrated. When I mentioned that episode #2 (On Leather Wings) tried to establish elements that perhaps required more space in which to breathe, Feat of Clay is kind of the perfect answer. The audience needs time to digest the ideas of both Clayface/Matt Hagen using his abilities to set up Bruce Wayne and the latter suffering the effects of that deceit. That pretty much requires a slower-paced approach to let those stories germinate properly. But this episode might have overdone it. Where episode #3 (Heart of Ice) went from action involving not only Mr. Freeze's henchmen but his outrageous technology, we spend quite some time in Feat watching The Batman struggle against routine thugs; one of whom takes down the unarmed combat master in the most routine of methods and threatens him with the giant gears of an abandoned railway system. Not exactly gripping when compared with the previous adventures.

Then we shift pace somewhat, as The Batman pursues one of those routine thugs in the Tim Burton-inspired Batwing, which essentially becomes a multiple-minute commercial for a toy, if not Burton's first Batman film. You can draw a parallel to extended car scenes from noir classics like The Postman Always Rings Twice or The Chase, so I think the thematic approach had some foundation. But it also becomes kind of tedious, especially when you realize that it seems like the room to breathe for other elements of the story may have been crimped by this and the train station fight or it may not have been necessary at all to stretch Feat of Clay over two episodes in the first place. My guess is that they realized that they had more story than one episode could hold, so they padded it out to two with these extended "action" scenes that don't really live up to the standards that the series had already set. The villain, however, is another matter.

We don't get to see a great deal of Clayface in action, but the character has a long and varied history with The Batman, such that there have been no less than 9(!) different versions of it. Not only can Clayface disguise himself as other people, he can confuse you as to which version of Clayface he/she/they really are. Matt Hagen is the one originally termed Clayface II because he was different from Basil Karlo (Does that sound like 'Boris Karloff'? Yes. Yes, it does.), the original Clayface who fought the 1940s Batman of Earth-2 (Don't ask. That reference to Crisis on Infinite Earths above? Seriously. If you don't know, it's OK.) But Clayface II also existed contemporaneously with Clayface III, whom I mentioned last time. Most of the Clayfaces are the shapeshifting-themselves type. III shapeshifted other people (as in, he dissolved them) while wearing an exoskeleton to keep himself from falling apart. So, a bit more visceral, but far more direct.

Clayface II is left page, third from right, behind The Penguin; Clayface III is right page, center, in the blue outfit.

The issue with Clayface most of the time is that subtle psychological power that his abilities convey. It doesn't lend itself to slam-bang action for which most comics were known, but it does create situations that would have massive effects out here in the real world. The plot of Feat of Clay is attempting to convey that. History is replete with examples of what the manipulation of public opinion can do (the latest example in the US was just last week...) But those efforts take time to set up, which isn't usually conducive to 24-page chunks of story that come out once a month and in which many people are expecting said slam-bang action. This is the challenge that villains like Clayface and Marvel's Mastermind, as well as heroes like Princess Projectra typically had in comics. Casting illusions or manipulating one's image are powers of subtlety, not the kind you use in the midst of the big fight on page 18. But when portrayed properly (see: Chris Claremont's use of Mastermind in the Dark Phoenix saga of X-Men or Keith Giffen's Shrinking Violet storyline in Legion of Super-Heroes; both of these in the 80s when comic audiences were more interested in stories of that type), they can create far more interesting tales than the typical slugfest over the content of a bank's vault.

So, that's likely the foundation for the pacing of this episode, but I'd still argue that they overdid it a bit. It wasn't helped by the generally stiffer appearance of the animation from whichever studio Fox had contracted this episode out to. There are a couple moments in the (endless) Batwing flight where you can almost see the spots where a couple frames must have been clipped out, as the action jerks from one moment to the next. This is a marked contrast to the fluidity displayed in the prior offerings. It was kind of encouraging to hear The Batman be not always so droll in his encounters with the opposition, referring to one as a "Dirtbag!". It was also entertaining to see him using what was basically the face-identification technology from For Your Eyes Only to remember one of Daggett's thugs, which was, of course, wholly appropriate for a story about Clayface. But it's certainly fair to say that this episode was a bit of a step down.

We'll see how this wraps up in Feat of Clay, part 2, next time.