10 Most Tragic Batman Villains

Here's a thought experiment: what if you could be anyone you wanted at any given moment, wear any face you want, all except for yours? Oh sure you could assume your original features, but those are no longer your default setting, and you know it. Instead when you aren't trying to be someone else, who you are is a horrific monster.

That is the existential hell of Basil Karlo, aka Clayface.

Before he was Clayface, Karlo started out as a modern day Lon Chaney, able to completely melt into any role he assumed. How his transformation plays out depends on what source you consult; sometimes it's a freak accident, other times he is intentionally covered in a chemical that plays musical chairs with a person's DNA, making Basil's body akin to always wet clay, able to be moulded to his whim with a mere thought.

The catch being, however, that his default form is no longer the handsome and charming Basil Karlo, but as a horrifying clay monster.

His reasons for being a bad guy vary as much as his origin, with the most recent explanation being that, until James Tynion IV's run on Detective Comics, his clay-like state didn't stop at his body. You can't just do what those chemicals did to his body to his brain and expect to come out mentally sound, so until recently he was an animal working purely on instinct.

It really is a nightmarish existence when you give it any thought, trapped in a body that is no longer truly your own, silently screaming inside your own broken mind. At least before his tragic death a few years ago, he got the chance to be a true hero.