Matt Hagen

An unscrupulous skin diver whose amazing powers are the result of his inadvertent discovery of a secret pool that “shimmers like a trapped rainbow” and is filled with “a strange liquid protoplasm” whose “freakish properties defy analysis” (Detective Comics No. 304, Jun 1962: “The Return of Clay- Face!”). After Hagen commits his first spectacular robbery—and engineers an astounding getaway by assuming, in rapid succession, the forms of a giant python, a buzz saw, and a huge eagle, an amazed newspaper editor bestows on him the name Clayface (Detective Comics No. 298, Dec 1961: “The Challenge of Clay-Face”). (See Clayface)