Basil Karlo

* Clayface
* Basil Karlo

*It's magic time.*
―Basil's catchphrase.[src]
**Basil Karlo** is an enemy of Batman who gained shapeshifting powers after drinking a beaker of chemicals from Wayne Industries, becoming the second **Clayface**.

## Physical appearance

Before he became Clayface, he was a man with a dark grey coat, a yellow shirt, blue pants and orange hair with buck teeth; he wore a watch. As Clayface, he has red eyes, light brown skin, and a a much more disproportional build compared to the former Clayface.

Karlo's acting role in "Revenge of the Atomic Clone".Karlo disguised as a scientist.Brock.Karlo in the Arkham inmate uniform.
## Personality

Differing from past incarnations of Basil Karlo and other Clayface alter egos as a whole, this Basil is sleazy, not very clever and slightly overweight, very overconfident in his ability to be an actor and unaware that he's fairly mediocre if not downright terrible in the eyes of critics.

Once he became the more aggressive Clayface, at first he was horrified by what he'd done but later embraced the monster within purely because finally, he was getting people's attention. All Clayface does is mostly out of presumably histrionic personality disorder (HPD).

## History

According to him, his mother left him and his siblings on the streets when he was five. He was left to beg on the streets, and his little sister Suzy asked every night why she had to sleep hungry. However, all of this is definitely lies that he said to gain the sympathy of the public.

Basil Karlo was shown to be a nerdy, unattractive, and untalented actor. Karlo was seen repeatedly turned down in auditions for a dog food commercial when he heard that Clayface was about to be cured while eating at a diner. Karlo broke into Wayne Tech poorly dressed as a scientist. The actor got very close to a Clayface specimen when a real scientist stopped him. Karlo, not knowing what to say, pushed the scientist down and grabbed a vial of Clayface's goop. An alarm sounded and Karlo was pursued by scientists and security guards alike lying that he needed to test it. Eventually Karlo was cornered. The actor, seeing no other option, drank the specimen. Karlo immediately began to have stomach pains, and the security guards approached him. The actor backed up into the wall, accidentally turned into a strange liquid form, and escaped through the security bars. The race for Karlo continued. Outside Wayne Industries, the guards arrived to find an elderly woman screaming that Karlo stole her purse. One of the guards calmed her down, and then the men continued after Karlo. As soon as the guards were out of sight, the old woman chuckled and transformed into Basil Karlo himself. Karlo assumed a handsome form known as Brock, and believed that his rejection was the result of his poor appearance. However, Karlo was once again rejected, causing him to snap and attack the unimpressed producers. At first, he believed that incident would be the death of his career, but he then saw that being a super-villain gave him the media's attention (despite the fact that it also made him infamous), covered on nearly every channel (he stopped on the last channel, which showed his previous movie, *The Revenge Of The Atomic Clone*). He then went on a crime spree making it hard for Batman and Robin to stop him. Eventually after a battle with Batman, Robin, and the original Clayface, Karlo was injected with the Clayface antidote, which seemingly restored him to normal. However, the episode's final scene showed that Clayface II still had his superpowers, thanks to Joker encouraging him that he isn't cured.

Karlo later reappeared in *The Batman/Superman Story Pt. 1* and *2* . He kidnapped Lois Lane while impersonating Clark Kent. where he, along with Bane and Mr. Freeze, was in the employ of Black Mask, who teamed up with Lex Luthor and kidnapped Lois Lane as bait for a trap to lure in Superman. He was eventually overwhelmedby Batman and Robin, which caused him to retreat. He later fought Batman in Luthor's headquarters as Batman was about to save Poison Ivy from Luthor's clutches, but Batman dehydrated him into dust. He then said he will be fine and just needed water.

## Powers and Abilities

Like the previous Clayface, Basil Karlo was capable of shape-shifting. While a terrible actor, the refined mutagen allowed Karlo to be much more powerful than his predecessor. Furthermore, he drank the entire beaker of the mutagen while Ethan merely sniffed a bit of it. Karlo's shape-shifting was of higher quality and he could even produce more complex weapons, such a rotating drill. Karlo's larger size also gave him greater strength as well. When Karlo impersonates somebody, he is also able to speak with that person's voice. He possesses the ability to shapeshift his body (or parts of his body, like his arm into a drill) into anyone or anything (even if they're much smaller than him, though he can also increase in size by adding more matter to his body), regenerate no matter how much his body is cut to pieces and fit into the tiniest of crevices. Additionally, his second most prominent ability is his superhuman strength, capable of tearing a bank vault door and toss it with incredible ease, something other superhumanly strong villains like Bane cannot do without putting at least some effort into it.

### Powers

* **Shape-shifting**
	+ **Instantaneous Regeneration**
	+ **Elasticity**
	+ **Limited Invulnerability**
	+ **Superhuman strength & stamina**
* **Clay-like Body:**
* **Mimicry**
* **Gliding**
* **Size Alteration**
* **Regeneration**
* **Density Control**
* **Bio-Fusion**
	+ **Bio-Fission**
* **Cure Immunity:** Due to taking a larger dose of the mutagen, Karlo is incurable.

### Weaknesses

Despite being able to become anyone, Basil Karlo was a terrible actor. As such, some, including Batman, were able to easily see through his deceptions. Due to his clay-like body, Karlo was also weakened when exposed to extremely cold temperature. Like Bennett, he would be frozen with gadgets, including Freeze Grenades, although he would break from them much easier than Bennett would. He was also vulnerable to being turned to dust by a flash dehydrate.

## Relationships

### Neutral

#### Joker

Basil did not seem to have as much of a grudge against Joker as Ethan did, however, he was not too fond of him either, calling him a jerk.

### Enemies

#### Ethan Bennett

Being the second Clayface,Ethan took it as his responsibilty to stop Karlo, as he has all of his powers.

## Appearances

### Season 4

* *Clayfaces* (First appearance)
* *The Joining, Part 1* (mentioned)

### Season 5

* *The Batman/Superman Story Pt. 1*
* *The Batman/Superman Story Pt. 2*

### *The Batman Strikes!*

* Issue 32 *How to Take Out a Room Full of Goons*
* Issue 39 *Hostile Takeover* (cameo)

## Trivia

* In the comics, Basil Karlo was the original Clayface. Other people that adopted the alias of Clayface in the comics included: Matt Hagen, Preston Payne, Sondra Fuller, Cassius "Clay" Payne, Dr. Peter Malley, Todd Russell, and Johnny Williams (Ethan Bennett was created exclusively for *The Batman*).
* Ethan merely sniffed a bit of the mutagen that made him Clayface while Basil drank the entire beaker of it. This would explain a lot including why Basil retained his power while Ethan didn't and why Basil is more powerful.
* Karlo and Tony Zucco are some of the few villains not to be captured by Rumor.
* Though quite different from the original, this is the first incarnation outside of the comics that is based on the original character, Basil Karlo, since past incarnations in other adapted works based their characters off Matt Hagen or Cassius Clay.
	+ Accurately to the comics in a way, Basil Karlo starts out without powers and obtains them from another Clayface, which is how Basil obtained his Clayface abilities in the New Earth/Post-Crisis era. Much like in *The Batman*, he was much stronger than the Clayfaces that came before him, due to having all of their powers at once (though he was later surpassed by other Clayfaces that came later).
* The role of the second Clayface is traditionally Matt Hagen, with Basil having been bumped down from his traditional spot as the first Clayface this naturally makes him a combination of the two with the name and profession of the first but the position of the second.
* Ironically, unlike Ethan Bennett (the first Clayface in *The Batman*) who has a huge grudge on The Joker for turning him into a monster, Basil appears to be on somewaht friendly terms with the mad clown.