Menaces Meet Masked Manhunter: Frightful Facial Finks

The original Clayface, a disgruntled actor Basil Karlo, used his skills in makeup to seek revenge against a movie industry that spurned him as his talented were no longer needed nor appreciated by them. After a few confrontations versus their world's Batmen, each Clayface was defeated. On both Earths One and Earth Two, these twin Basil Karlos had parallel pasts, having tormented Batman and his alter ego Bruce Wayne's girlfriend Julie Madison as well as Hollywood.

While they failed in their goals of vindication despite displaying a viable threat with their threatening thespian tactics, their lethal legacies would continue. The first two examples were Matt Hagen aka Clayface of Earth-One and Bart Megan aka Doctor No-Face of Earth Two.

Hagen was a treasure hunter who stumbled upon a miraculous pool filled with protoplasm that bonded to his flesh, granting him shape changing abilities. Megan was a career criminal and amateur scientist obsessed with removing his facial scars using Doctor Paul Dent's facial rejuvenation ray, which left his face featureless.

Matt Hagen and Bart Megan were thus men that discovered the means to transform their very appearance. This ultimately led to them becoming nuisances for Gotham's garbed guardians.

After this, Hagen became the second Clayface, battling first Earth-One's Batman and Robin, then later the World's Finest Team of the Dynamic Duo alongside Superman. He would attempt as John Royce to unsuccessfully force Professor Colton to help extend the protoplasm's 48 hour time limit.

Simultaneously, as Doctor No-Face, Megan pretended to be a disfigured and psychotic Doctor Dent to commit destructive acts to conceal his gang's petty thefts. Once his scheme was revealed, Batman and Robin of Earth-Two brought him to justice while having his face restored. He would later reappear under another alias.

Clayface would encounter supervillains such as the Joker and Brainiac, whom he quarreled and alled with at various times. Eventually, Hagen was recruited into Queen Bee's Anti-Justice League where they faced their heroic opponents the Justice League of America. Despite initial success versus the League, thanks to Superman's intervention, the Anti-League ultimately met defeat.

The Batman Encyclopedia verifies that Bart Megan existed on Earth-Two. Further, he was proceeded by two others known as No-Face who battled Robin. One was actor John Cory and the other a villain named Melom who was impersonating him in order to conceal a crime, which Robin thwarted.

Hagen mostly relied on a synthetic version of the protoplasm when his access to the subterranean pool was blocked by his adversary. Clayface returned years after his initial capers alongside other Batman foes including the problematic pirate known as Captain Stinagree. On these occasions, and later when he would attempt once more to strike out on his own to seek revenge against his frequent foes after having discovered another passage to his secret protoplasm pool. He would eventually perish during the Crisis on Infinite Earths, although not before indirectly creating a successor to his and Karlo's legacy.

Megan adopted another physician identity years later as Graham Peake, a doctor at a prominent hospital in Gotham City on Earth-Two. An amateur painter, his main occupation was working alongside fellow researcher Mizuki Tori who developed a revolutionary genetic therapy treatment known as Project Starfish.

The technique transformed organic matter into its protoplasmic base material, resembling clay, that could be transformed into any shape desired, from a missing limb to different types of animals. The Huntress became aware of this project and learned that a mysterious man know as Sea-Lion was trying to illegally procure it. This reconstructive science became an obsession for Bart Megan beyond his criminal career.

The culprit turned out to be Peake himself, who used his rainbow colored painting to secretly show spectrograph readings that he would display in his gallery during showings, allowing his boss to see them and reconstruct the recombinant DNA formula sequence in his submarine laboratory. When Huntress got wise to his schemes, Sea-Lion captured both her and Peake, whom he used as a test subject. The villain taunted the Huntress that he could transform his henchman into a a fish or snake, although she broke free of her bonds and restored Peake to his normal human shape. With Sea-Lion and Peake/Megan captured, Huntress presumably turned over the research to Doctor Tori and her government project.

Then there was a third Clayface named as such on Earth-One. Preston Payne, while a brilliant scientist, was the hereditary recipient of a condition known as hyperpituitarism, which caused several facial scarring. Experimenting on a solution derived from Matt Hagen aka Clayface II, he tried to transform his features but instead soon became a toxic carrier of a viral disease. After battling with Batman, Payne seemingly perished.

His doppleganger on Earth-Two was the brother of scientist Sir Basil Lorimer. After Basil invented a glowing metallic globe that emitted deadly radiation, his sibling slayed him and absconded with the item. Wearing a lead liked clay mask that protected him from the affects of this deadly discovery, Lorimer as the Yellow Faced Threat embarked on a criminal career, incurring the attention of the Sandman. Wesley Dodds aka the Sandman was able to determine the identity of the fiend and corner him. A final confrontation between the two led to the Yellow Face perishing.