Batman: The Animated Series - "Mudslide"

“I don’t know if I can stand this much longer. Trapped in this suit, surviving on chemicals – it’s a nightmare.”

Clayface is back, but he’s falling to pieces, his structural integrity compromised by the Renuyu chemicals that turned him into a man of mud. With a string of robberies to hold himself together, Clayface limps his way into the arms of Dr. Stella Bates (Pat Musick), whose medical experiments have caught the eye of Batman, as well.

A few weeks ago, we saw an operatic take on The Penguin’s villainy with “Birds of a Feather,” and with “Mudslide” it’s Clayface’s turn to get a dose of high tragedy. “Feat of Clay,” to which this episode is a sequel in all but name only, introduced Clayface in all his unmistakable villainy, but it layered in that particularly BtAS brand of pathos by metaphorizing his condition as a drug addiction in an image-conscious industry. Here, Clayface is a kind of Jean Valjean with a degenerative neurological disorder, resorting to robbery to stave off his own cellular decay. It’s Clayface’s own inability to ask for help that ends up his tragic flaw; Batman is only ever interested in helping Clayface, who can’t see the hero as anything but a punitive force of misapplied justice.

This episode’s Clayface is a perfect example of the voice and the animation working in alchemical tandem. Ron Perlman returns with a throat full of gravel, where the pain is all too evident and the rage isn’t concealed one whit. Joining the voice of a six-foot mountain of a man to a stubby mud-man oddly fits this character, especially as his physical form is deteriorating but his mind is all too aware of what’s happening. The animation on Clayface was slick in “Feat of Clay,” but here it’s really admirable, capturing every melting glob and roiling putrescence. (The sound design, too, with a sick squish at every melty step, helps this characterization land.) I have wondered at the possibility of a live-action Clayface, but it’s difficult to imagine a CGI version of the character working as well as this conventionally-animated one does.

We know this isn’t the last we’ll see of Clayface – even if we weren’t reassured by knowledge of his subsequent appearance, nobody stays dead in comics except Uncle Ben – but I appreciated the way this episode wraps Clayface’s decline with a whole host of movie references. I recently read an issue of Secret Origins which introduced no fewer than four versions of the character, somewhat muddying the waters (no pun intended). This sort of immersion in the language of film would help cement Clayface (pun intended) as a singular character without these murky alternate versions. In one scene, he playacts at being menacing to scare away a crowd; in another, he throws every showbiz cliché at Batman to posture at being indestructible. “You’ve upstaged me for the last time, Batman. Time to bring down the curtain! [. . .] Time for your final bow, Batman!”

Pairing Clayface with Dr. Stella Bates – herself named for two significant film characters (hint, shout her first name while recalling she once owned a motel) – gives the show yet another examination of the way we’re molded by the media we consume. It’s not as on-the-nose as “Beware the Gray Ghost,” but it is radiantly successful in helping us understand why this doctor would willingly collaborate with a known super-criminal. The moments where she watches the DC equivalent of Dark Passage are darkly touching, and Clayface’s perversion of that film’s dialogue to manipulate Stella is equally chilling. (At least, I take it to be manipulation; the episode is surprisingly vague on that count.)

“Mudslide” is maybe not the best remembered of Batman: The Animated Series, solely by dint of not being remembered, period (and doubtless overshadowed by “Feat of Clay”). While the plot is brisk and moves quickly through its straightforward through-line, there’s enough nuance bubbling beneath the surface to make this one a winner and a heck of a note on which its villain can go out. Episodes like this always leave you wanting more – and the consummate showman Clayface would doubtless appreciate that.

Original Air Date: September 15, 1993

Writers: Alan Burnett and Steve Perry

Director: Eric Radomski

Villain: Clayface (Ron Perlman)

Next episode: “Paging the Crime Doctor,” in which I think Leslie Thompkins shows up? I honestly don’t remember this episode at all.

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