The dark side of Hollywood can be as terrifying as the darkest alley in Gotham City. Which is why Los Angeles makes the perfect setting for Batman: One Bad Day – Clayface, the latest chapter in DC Comics’ anthology series spotlighting the various Bat-villains. This issue is a horror tale that serves as a reminder that the film industry can break anyone’s spirit – even a hardened, card-carrying member of the Dark Knight’s Rogues Gallery like Basil Karlo.
To find out more about how this new issue pushes this longtime Batman foe to his limits and takes a meta approach to Hollywood, IGN spoke with writers Collin Kelly and Jackson Lanzing and artist Xermanico.
Taking Clayface From Gotham to Los Angeles
The new 64-page one-shot, which is out available in stores now, spotlights Clayface as he ventures out west to revive his acting career. However, as his earnest efforts are dismissed by Hollywood, his disillusionment turns to desperation and eventually, bloodshed. The story was created by writers Collin Kelly and Jackson Lanzing, artist Xermanico and colorist Romulo Fajardo, Jr. It’s as much a tragedy as it is a horror story, an apt description for the Hollywood experience many aspiring actors, filmmakers and writers experience. For Kelly and Lanzing, detailing Clayface’s struggles in the movie business was quite the meta experience.
“Write what you know, and that’s what we did. We know what it’s like to be in that grinder, to move through it and lose yourself in it,” Lanzing tells IGN.
“The secret of Los Angeles is that there is a creeping darkness everywhere that kind of wants to consume you in the same way that there’s that simmering evil in Gotham City,” adds Kelly. “ So being able to bring that feeling to this place that we love and show people that this town isn’t exclusively glitz and glamour, and is much more like Gotham than you would expect, was a real delight.”
Having been screenwriters before they entered comics, Kelly and Lanzing are intimately familiar with the soul-shattering insincerity that permeates the movie industry. Their time in the movie trenches helped get them the Clayface gig.
“We were surprised to be offered Clayface since we’re not really horror writers,” Lanzing says. “Editor Dave Wielgosz said, ‘you guys have lived in Hollywood for 15 years, and you know what it’s like to like. You know that industry, and you know how brutal it can be, especially in the features game.’”
“A lot of the lines in this story are directly from our experience or experiences of our friends,” adds Kelly. “The wild thing about Hollywood is, you are not allowed to flip out and have a one bad day, because if you have a one bad day, you may not ever work again. So all of that pain and all of that cruelty that Hollywood heaps on your shoulders you have to take with a smile…and letting it kind of harden into something we were very happy to be able to weaponize for this terrible story of Basil Karlo.”
The Visuals of One Bad Day: Clayface
While the body count is high in One Bad Day: Clayface, the pacing is deliberate. Artist Xermanico, who met his collaborators face-to-face for the first time during our Zoom interview, uses the 64-page format to great effect to portray the disappointment that fuels Karlo’s descent into murder. Xermanico credits his partners for delivering a script that offered many avenues for creative interpretation.
“It was really easy to look between the lines [of the script],” says the Spanish artist, whose real name is Alejandro Germanico Benito Gonzalez. “When I was approaching the project, I had my doubts. I asked them some little things, but it it all came together.”
Lanzing credits Xermanico for adding texture to the story with his use of screenplay pages as a storytelling device, and attention to detail in sequences like one set at the legendary Chateau Marmont hotel. The artist, who worked digitally for the one-shot, had never visited Los Angeles, let alone visited the Marmont. He relied on photos and Google’s Street View tech as reference to capture the authenticity the writers sought.
“When you’re writing in Gotham or Metropolis, or Central City, or Keystone… those places don’t have reference,” Lanzing says. “But this is Los Angeles, the place we’ve lived in for 15 years. When Clayface and Batman face off in Macarthur Park, that’s down the street from my house. If we’re going to put it in the book, we want people to look at it and really see the city. Xermanico really captured that.”
The artist even created a series of movie posters [seen above] set within the story that enhanced the in-world aesthetic.
“A comics writer isn’t really like a writer in Hollywood. They’re very different jobs,” Kelly says. “What a writer is in comics is much more like a director, and the director has to trust the rest of the team to bring the story to life… and so our job [writing One Bad Day] was to find the emotional beats of these characters, and then giving it to Xermanico, because he’s not just the production designer and the cinematographer, but also like an actor.”
Crafting a Batman story that isn’t really about Batman is a unique challenge that each creative team working on One Bad Day faced, but one that the writers, both longtime fans of the Bat and his rich mythos, say was incredibly rewarding.
“But we all know the truth. Wherever you go, Batman can find you.”
“Our focus was always going to be Clayface. The Batman of it all was frankly secondary, and we got this amazing opportunity to focus a story that was not necessarily about Bruce,” Kelly notes. “I think his presence is felt, and the neat thing is, in the back of Basil’s mind all the time there is a Batman, right? He thinks that by coming to L.A. he can finally escape that darkness. But we all know the truth. Wherever you go, Batman can find you.”
Batman – One Bad Day: Clayface is available at comics shops now.
In other comic book news, the latest issue of Amazing Spider-Man has some fans livid, and Battle Chasers is finally returning after a 22 year hiatus.
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