Basil Karlo
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Basil Karlo
The original Clayface, Basil Karlo, appeared in Detective Comics #40. He is an actor who is driven mad when he hears of a remake of the classic horror film he had starred in, The Terror, even though he is to be one of the advising staff. Donning the mask of the film's villain, Clayface, he embarks on a murder spree among the cast and crew of the remake. He is foiled by Batman and Robin.He reappears in Detective Comics #49 (March 1941) after the prison ambulance he is riding in plunges off a cliff. He once again dons the mask of Clayface and targets Bruce Wayne's fiancee. Once again, the Dynamic Duo foil the evil Karlo.
Much later, Karlo languishes in a prison hospital, when Sondra Fuller visits him out of curiosity. Karlo proposes an alliance between all living Clayfaces to kill Batman. Even though the Mud Pack, as the group called itself, is defeated, Karlo manages, by tricking his allies, to imbue himself with abilities similar to those of Preston Payne and Sondra Fuller. He was defeated by the combined efforts of Batman and Looker of the Outsiders by overloading his abilities making him melt into the ground. While literally sinking into the earth's crust when he loses control of his power, he manages to survive, and now his body sports crystals similar to quartz that endow him with greater powers. Karlo was able to escape his underground prison when Gotham City was struck by the great Cataclysm. He was able to capture Batman and was about to kill him, but he got into a feud with Mr. Freeze on who has a right to kill the Caped Crusader. With that distraction, Batman soundly defeated both of them.
During the "No Man's Land" storyline, Basil Karlo holds Poison Ivy, who is in charge of producing fresh vegetables for the remaining people in the city, prisoner in Robinson Park. Poison Ivy eventually battles and defeats Karlo, sinking him deep into the ground. It appears that the Ultimate Clayface is destroyed in this battle, but has resurfaced as a member of the Secret Society of Super Villains. Later, he seeks to increase his already formidable powers by absorbing Wonder Woman (a clay construct similar to him), giving him an amount of powers that bordered on invulnerability. While he is successful in absorbing the heroine, he is ultimately forced to release her.
Basil Karlo was among the members of the Injustice League and was among the villains seen in Salvation Run. His name is a pun on Boris Karloff. He can be seen as the member of Libra's Secret Society of Super Villains. In the secondissue of Final Crisis, he triggers an explosion at the Daily Planet that apparently kills Lois Lane and Perry White.
Basil Karlo in The Batman
The fourth season episode "Clayfaces" introduces Basil Karlo (in his first actual appearance outside the comics) as the series' second Clayface, voiced by Wallace Langham and later by Lex Lang. Here, he is shown to be an ugly, untalented actor. He is seen repeatedly turned down in auditions for a dog food commercial when he hears that Bennett is about to be cured.
Karlo breaks into Wayne Industries and drinks a refined, purified sample of the Clayface mutagen Bennett was exposed to. This successfully turns him into Clayface. After being rejected once again for a dog food commercial, he snaps and uses his Clayface powers to attack the city. At first he believes this incident would be the death of his career, but he then sees that being a supervillain has made him a celebrity, covered on nearly every channel. At the last channel he stops on, it shows his previous movie, The Revenge of The Atomic Clone.
After a battle with Batman, Robin, and Ethan Bennett, Basil Karlo is injected with the Clayface antidote, seemingly restoring him to normal. However, the episode's final scene shows that Karlo has retained his powers. Karlo describes this form of Clayface as a "bigger and better sequel to the original!"
He reappears in The Batman/Superman Story, Part One where he, along with Bane and Mr. Freeze, is in the employ of Black Mask, who has teamed up with Lex Luthor and kidnapped Lois Lane as bait for a trap to lure in Superman.