Always A Bridesmaid: Batman #19 Review

Editor’s Note: Your have eaten Gotham’s wealth. Its spoilers. From now on, none of you are safe.

Is there anyone who saw the teaser for the WTF cover of Batman #19 and didn’t know pretty much automatically that it was probably Clayface impersonating Bruce Wayne? And more importantly, is there anyone in the comics reading world who really gives a tin shit about Clayface?

I mean, the concept of Clayface has been around 1940, and even after all that time, it’s not like Clayface is anybody’s idea of a classic character. Because even though there is clearly enough behind the concept of a shapeshifting supervillain to keep Clayface popping up now and again for the past 63 years, let’s face reality: there have been eight different Clayfaces since Detective Comics #40. The only reason to revamp a “classic” villain on an average of every eight years is if there is something fundamentally wrong with it.

The fact of the matter is “Clayface” is nothing but a set of powers behind a grotesque body, with next to no personality behind it. Hell, I’ve been reading Batman comics for 37 years, and I couldn’t tell you any of the Clayface’ origin stories, or what motivates them to crime as opposed to, say, looking at my dripping, earthy face and attempting suicide. Or maybe shifting into Brad Pitt and trying to impersonate myself into a better life (although if you’re old enough to remember Angelina Jolie back when she drank blood and was married to Billy Bob Thornton, you might think she’d be more into the whole monster thing).

My point is, I don’t think anyone really cares about Clayface. And Clayface is the antagonist of Batman #19. So the question is: does writer Scott Snyder finally do anything interesting with the character?

Short answer: nah. Not really.

The book opens by making good on the promise of the cover: by showing Bruce Wayne sticking up a bank with a bunch of hostages. “Bruce” makes his escape after giving Commissioner Gordon a vestload of buckshot, and we cut to Batman, looking at old recordings of fighting with the recently-deceased Robin and basically wallowing in self-pity. Batman is told that an old friend committed suicide under suspicious circumstances and investigates, only to find him alive and kicking – or at least alive and flamethrowering. Batman gives chase to no avail, and runs the physical evidence to find that it almost completely matches his old buddy’s… except for a trace of Basil Karlo – the original Clayface. Bruce then goes to Lucius Fox to obtain a new costume that might prevent Clayface from sampling his DNA in battle… only to find that Lucius might have already met Mr. Karlo.

There just isn’t much new or all that interesting in this Clayface story. We’ve got Clayface robbing a bank, but he always does that. We’ve got Clayface imitating other people for his personal and financial gain, but he always does that. We’ve got Clayface on some kind of vendetta against Batman, but he always. Does. That. Beyond introducing the idea that now Clayface can imitate someone to the point where he can even get down to the DNA level, and Snyder’s attempt to tie the idea of Clayface to Navajo Skinwalkers and Norse Berserkers, there simply isn’t anything new to this Clayface story.

Even the interlude of Batman watching his recording of a battle with Robin was kind of a retread. Sure, it was nice to see The Reaper from Batman: Year Two again, but the lead-in chase sequence of Batman on the Batpod, with the Pod going sideways – was straight out of Jonathan Nolan’s The Dark Knight. Hell, even Batman moping around the Batcave and slowly becoming more violent is reminiscent of what he went through after the Death In The Family arc in the late 80s, to the point where Snyder even has Alfred mention the similarities to Batman.

Sure, the art in Batman #19 by Greg Capullo is as good as it ever is, with some solid action choreography, some great moody, shadowed panels of Batman and one genuinely horrifying sequence of Clayface emerging from disguise to attack Bruce Wayne, but even his normal depiction of Clayface is nothing that we haven’t seen a million times before over the years.

I recognize that this isn’t the longest or most detailed review ever, but the reality is that there just isn’t really anything special about Batman #19. Unlike the Court of The Owls storyline where Snyder took a fresh take on Gotham City and Batman’s relationship to it, or Death of The Family which rejuvenated the Batman / Joker relationship for the New 52, this is… just another issue of Batman with Clayface, where Clayface is pissed and committing crimes because, well, he’s Clayface (or at least one of them). And while not every Batman story can be an epic, this one just feels perfunctory. It’s not bad, per se, but it is imminently skippable.