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BATMAN #159 — the Joker gets jealous.
Cover-dated November 1963. Matt Hagen has broken out of prison, recovered the hidden cache of liquid that turns him into Clayface, and worked out how to synthesize more of it — though the new formula only holds for five hours at a stretch. He goes back to work. Gotham notices.
The Joker cannot stand it. Bill Finger's premise is that the Clown Prince of Crime is, above everything else, a professional with an ego, and a rival taking all the headlines is intolerable. So the two of them conduct a feud entirely through impersonation — each committing crimes in the other man's style, each trying to prove he can do the other's job better. Batman, Robin, Batwoman and Bat-Girl spend the issue trying to work out which of them they are actually looking at, and Batman eventually settles it by impersonating the Joker himself.
Sheldon Moldoff drew it, Charles Paris inked, Jack Schiff edited. And this is very near the end of that era. Six months after this issue, with the Batman titles close enough to cancellation that DC discussed killing the character off, Julius Schwartz was handed the books and the "New Look" arrived in Detective Comics #327. Out went the aliens, the freak transformations, Bat-Mite, Ace the Bat-Hound — and Batwoman and the original Bat-Girl.
Which is what makes the cover worth a second look. Kathy Kane and Betty Kane are both up on that rooftop, in costume, months away from being written out. Betty Kane's Bat-Girl would not be replaced until Barbara Gordon debuted in 1967, and Barbara was a different character entirely.
The backup, "The Boyhood of Bruce Wayne, Jr.," is an imaginary story — another form the New Look swept away.
Warner Bros. has a Clayface film scheduled for October 23, 2026, with Tom Rhys Harries cast as Matt Hagen: the same incarnation of the character who appears in this issue.
This copy grades PGX 7.5, Very Fine-, with off-white to white pages, graded May 2014.
PGX 7.5 · Off-White to White pages · "The Great Clayface-Joker Feud" · Batwoman & Bat-Girl · Finger & Moldoff · DC, 1963
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