Posted in: Cartoon Network, Fox, Review, TV, Warner Animation Group | Tagged: Batman, batman the animated series, bruce timm, bruce wayne, Clayface, dc comics, Kevin Conroy, Warner Bros

Batman: The Animated Series Rewind Review: S01E04 Feat of Clay Part 2

Welcome back Bat-fans as we take a walk down Batman memory lane and rewatch Batman: The Animated Series for its 30th anniversary!  Today we're going to jump right back into our story from last week as we continue Matt Hagen's journey into becoming the supervillain Clayface with Feat of Clay Part II.

Feat of Clay Part II (Original Air Date: 9/9/1992)

The official synopsis for the episode: "Clayface learns that the man responsible for his disfigurement is to appear on TV, promoting a skin conditioner containing the same chemical that deformed him."

This was the fifth episode to air, but the twenty-first produced.  It is the second part of the introductory Clayface story, but there are some differences.  Part 1 was directed by Dick Sebast, while Part 2 was directed by Kevin Altieri.  The story credit for both parts is shared by Marv Wolfman and Michael Reaves, but while Wolfman handled the script on the first part solo, Reaves does the same here with Part 2.

We open with the startling images of Bruce Wayne getting his mugshots taken and being locked up.  Like any super-rich and powerful man though, he's quickly bailed out by his attorney and released.  As Alfred speeds away from the mob of reporters at the Police Station with Bruce in the backseat, we see him immediately begin to change into his Batman attire as the two discuss what could have happened to frame him as Lucius Fox's attacker.

We then go to Matt Hagen's trailer on the Imperial Pictures lot, where inside, we see Hagen (Ron Perlman) and his friend Teddy packing all of his stuff up.  Hagen is ordering all of his clothes and possessions to be destroyed, while Teddy tries to convince him that he can come back from what happened to him.  We then see the monster Hagen has become: Clayface.  He screams that he can't come back from "this" and that Matt Hagen is history.

Meanwhile, Roland Daggett (Ed Asner) tours his chemicals factory is being briefed that his henchman that Batman turned over to the police hasn't revealed anything to them yet.  Daggett swears he will take over Wayne Enterprises, but his plan for acquiring it will have to be revised, as Hagen is no longer around.  He orders his henchman to murder Lucius Fox in his hospital room, even though the man protests this due to his fear of germs.

We cut back to Hagen's trailer, where he recounts what happened after his car accident that initially damaged his face.  He explains how Daggett approached him then, offering him the chance to be the first to try a substance to help fix his face.  Teddy tries to look on the bright side, saying how he had his biggest hit films after.  As Clayface walks by the wall of character photos, his face morphs into each one as he looks at them.  This wows him and Teddy, as they realize he can immediately change into anything he thinks of, like a reflex.

Teddy tells him that this means he can still go on with his career, as Clayface fully changes his entire body into one of the characters.  But as soon as he loses his concentration, he turns back to his monstrous self, which throws him into a rage and he destroys the trailer. "I'm not an actor anymore!  I'm not even… a man."  He falls to his knees and breaks down sobbing.

Teddy and Clayface arrive at the hospital, where Clayface explains that eventually, Daggett will send someone to kill Fox and once he sees who it is, he can "take his place", which will allow him to get close to Daggett and kill him.  Clayface turns into a doctor he sees to enter the hospital, while up in Fox's room, Daggett's henchman is readying to smother Fox with a pillow.  That is until the pillow is stabbed into the wall by a Batarang.

Batman jumps in through the window and the henchman goes running scared and winds up trying to hide in a lab that houses infectious disease samples.  The germaphobic henchman is trapped in the room by Batman, who interrogates the man by threatening him with the disease samples.  The henchman spills the beans about Hagen impersonating Bruce Wayne and is about to reveal how Hagen could manipulate his looks when a policeman enters and tells Batman he'll take it from here.  As Batman notices something suspicious, the policeman turns into Clayface and thrusts Batman into the ceiling, knocking him out.

Clayface grabs the henchman and heads out as Batman comes to.  Batman chases them to the rooftop and saves the henchman right as Clayface tries to throw him off the roof.  Batman battles Clayface, dodging all of the weapons he creates of himself, such as giant hammers, blade fingers, etc.  Clayface eventually throws Batman off the edge of the building, with Batman just barely catching the ledge and hanging on by one hand.

As Clayface goes in for the kill, he collapses from weakness and Batman deduces that all of the shapechanging absorbed his energy.  As the police arrive, Clayface leaps off the building.  Batman tries throwing a line around him, but it goes right through him and he splatters on the street below and slithers into the sewer.

At Teddy's house, Clayface sees on TV that Daggett will be making an appearance on a talk show to pitch the cream that turned Hagen into Clayface and he plans to get him there.  Teddy tries to reason with his friend to relax and rest, but Clayface explodes on him in anger and assaults him.  Meanwhile, Batman investigates Hagen's trailer for clues and finds a container of Daggett's cream, which he takes to the Bat Cave to investigate.  He figures out that the cream turned Hagen into the monster he fought, just as Alfred brings him numerous tapes of Hagen's films.

At the TV studio, Daggett appears for a live on-stage interview on Gotham Insider.  Batman sneaks in disguised as a janitor and enters the control room, as Daggett pitches his miracle cream for the audience.  Batman places the tapes Alfred provided in the control deck.

It is then that a woman in the audience asks a question of Daggett. She asks about the rumors about the harmful side effects and addictiveness of the cream.  As Daggett squirms, the woman approaches the stage and transforms into Clayface, sending the audience screaming and running for the doors.  Clayface grabs Daggett, but Batman intervenes.  Batman stops Daggett when he tries to run and then tries reasoning with Clayface, but the monster responds by trying to kill him and shapeshifts into numerous axes and stabbing weapons.  Batman lures Clayface to smash through a wall and follows him out into the hallway, where Clayface springs an attack on Batman and pins him to the wall.

Batman breaks free and tackles Clayface into the control room.  As Clayface smothers Batman, he's able to reach for the controls and hit play, which fills the monitors surrounding them with images of all of Hagen's different characters.  This shocks and overtakes Clayface, who breaks down at the sight of them.  Batman pleads with him to let him help him find a cure for what happened to him, as Clayface transforms involuntarily into the different characters, weakening him in the process.

Clayface destroys the console, but his body is shifting completely out of control now, even without the motivation.  The police arrive to see him shift into Bruce Wayne, which allows them to see that the real Bruce Wayne is innocent.  He thrusts himself into the console and electrocutes himself to make it stop, finally falling to the floor in a smoking heap.  As Batman approaches him, he transforms into the handsome Matt Hagen and then the scarred Matt Hagen one final time.  "You know what I'da given for a death scene like this?  Too bad I won't get to read the notices."  He then morphs into his final Clayface form and appears to die.

We then see an interview with a healed Lucius Fox, who says he's glad that the real Bruce Wayne wasn't the one who attacked him.  The reporter continues that all of the charges against Wayne were dropped and Daggett is in police custody.  Alfred shuts the TV off playing the story in the Bat Cave, as Batman experiments with a sample from Clayface.  He tries electrocuting the sample a couple of times, but it still transforms into different objects.  Batman and Alfred note how electricity does not affect it.

We see Clayface's body in the morgue on a cart.  "I wouldn't be surprised if the body they took to the morgue was only a shell."  We see the body crack and turn to dust.  "Don't forget, first and foremost, Hagen was an actor.  He said it himself Alfred, he called it a 'scene'.  Maybe the greatest scene of his career."  We now see Teddy looking sadly up at the hospital from the street.  He says goodbye to his friend and walks off, as a woman on the street watches him.  "A death scene so real, it fooled us all."  The woman begins laughing maniacally and we hear her voice get deeper and see her eyes turn yellow.  She is Clayface.

And that's that for the two-part Feat of Clay story.  The episodes received glowing praise from fans, who especially loved the dark, complex tones presented with Clayface here.  And as a result, the show's creators wanted the story to stand alone for a while instead of bringing Clayface back quickly.  They wouldn't return to the character until a full year later in episode 63, Mudslide.

The episode is most praised for its striking animation.  The shapeshifting effects and use of movement are stunning to this day.  The episode was animated by a studio named Tokyo Movie Shinsha, who ironically, completely disregarded the coloring instructions they were given by the show's creators and instead created their own palette of earthy browns and reds.

Seeing the results though, series creator Bruce Timm loved it and wasn't upset about the rejection of what they were directed to do initially. "I think when we shipped them 'Clayface,' they said to themselves: They think they know everything, but we'll show them how to do this show. We'll change Batman's colors. We'll do special color key treatments on the villains when they're walking over the green vat. We'll blow them away.' If that's their revenge, thank you for proving us wrong. I was so happy with that episode."

Colorwise, one of the most captivating moments comes early in the episode when Daggett and his henchman are walking through the factory on a catwalk above vats of chemicals.  There's an otherworldly glowing green to the chemicals that looks so sinister that there's no mistaking that these things are dangerous.  Timm noted that as well, saying "The sequence where Daggett and Germs are walking over that green vat, those characters look like they're three-dimensional. They look like they're rotoscoped. When Daggett slowly turns toward the camera, the shadows really wrap around his face. It's as if they're real! They did all those colors themselves. We couldn't even ask for those colors if we wanted to. They aren't even in our palette. They had to specially mix those colors."

Of course, one of the most enduring parts of this episode is the stirring music by Shirley Walker, who created one of her most iconic character themes for the series here.  Her Clayface theme is as varied as the character of Matt Hagen/Clayface himself.  We can hear and feel pride, tragedy, sorrow, desperation, rage, and monstrousness when hearing what she came up with.  It perfectly encapsulates and explores the character, which all great musical themes do.

Again with this episode, we are presented with an almost old B-movie plot and villain, but by the writers giving the villain pathos and empathetic qualities, it brings everything up to much higher quality and enhances the entire experience.  It's not as easy an accomplishment this time, as Matt Hagen doesn't instantly pull on your heartstrings as Victor Fries did in Heart of Ice.  But in going through his loss and desperation, seeing this man suffer and become warped, you do understand him and feel for him.  And Batman does the same here.  Like with Man-Bat and Mr. Freeze before him, Clayface isn't seen as a psychopath or a hopeless case by Batman and our hero tries, futilely, to help him.  This Batman and the one I always loved most from the comics was a man who saved his rage and violence for The Joker or some vicious individual who's only out to hurt others.  There's no helping someone like that.  But a person who suffers a tragedy and becomes a distraught, confused, and misguided version of themselves on the other side, that's not someone beyond helping and Batman realizes this.  Batman is a victim himself and it impacts everything he does going forward.  That's Bill Finger's Batman.  That's Dennis O'Neil's Batman.  That's Steve Englehart's Batman.  That's Scott Snyder's Batman.  And that's my Batman!

This episode along with the entire series is available on HBO Max in full HD.

Next week we'll dive into the gangster underworld of Gotham City with a very unique episode, It's Never Too Late. See you next time Bat-fans!

Batman: The Animated Series Season 1 Episode 5 "Feat of Clay Part II"

---

Review by Ryan Fassett

---

9/10

The second part of the two-part Feat of Clay story is the superior half. It's more action-packed, the characters are more entertaining, the animation is far better, and it really shows off the creativity of the show's creators in what they come up with for Clayface to do and how he uses his abilities. It's one of the most fondly remembered episodes of the first season of Batman: The Animated Series and it's easy to see why.

Credits

---

Director

Kevin Altieri

Story

Marv Wolfman & Michael Reaves

Teleplay

Michael Reaves

Music

Shirley Walker

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!